


Fur and Feather

by Dogwood



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dalish Elves, Eventual Smut, F/M, Love/Hate, POV Lavellan, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Post-Trespasser, Shapeshifting, Slow Burn, Solas is Fen'Harel, The Western Approach, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:57:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 53,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5994001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dogwood/pseuds/Dogwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Trespasser, slow burn. Takes place a year after the events of the Exalted Council. </p><p>A miscalculation on Solas' part results in the Evanuris' escape from behind the mirror, while Lavellan wakes to find herself temporarily transformed into one of Ghilan'nain's wolf-shaped trophies. He's forced to contend with the remaining members of the elvhen pantheon before moving forward with his plans, while Lavellan works to thwart him however she can.</p><p>Updates Sundays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. But Who

When Lavellan awoke it was suddenly and with a gasp, as if she'd forgotten how to breathe and was only just reminded it was necessary.

Her scattered thoughts began to assemble themselves, shrugging their way through the haze of confusion that came after a deep sleep, and she found herself on her stomach, breathing in the earthy, green scent of the moss by her nose.

Memories of an ambush came flooding back to her almost immediately. Harding had been with her - Cullen too - along with a handful of allied Dalish as they skirted the southern edge of the dense Nevarran forest hunting for signs of their prey's trail.

They'd found it and more as the small group stumbled upon a handful of Falon'Din's scouts cooking their breakfast over a smokeless fire. There had been a beat of mutual shock, but Cullen's roar of attack had shattered the stillness and sent them scrambling for their weapons. Harding's bow had been quicker though, and two had fallen before hands found hilts.

For her own part, Lavellan had been stepping around a lopsided boulder, gaze intent on a target of her own when her memory had simply drifted apart, scattering into darkness like so much sand in the Western Approach.

Then, for what felt like ages, nothing but blackness.

Her body ached with disuse, but a glance at the sloping shadows told her it was only late afternoon.

She raised her head to survey the damage, and when she did she found herself lying atop some sort of pawed creature, thick black claws protruding from a soft, white foot.

The paw twitched. Alive then.

She bolted upright in an attempt to put some distance between her and it, but only succeeded in toppling over backwards and rolling into a fallen log, sending a rain of rotted bark down on her.

Righting herself was an ungainly affair, three limbs twisting about in the air until she managed to tip onto her side. From her new vantage point she had an excellent view of the paw, and the realization that struck her was like a splash of ice water.

The paws - all three of them - were attached to her. _Were_ her.

She tested her theory, flexing the forepaw as it lay against the forest floor, and it did as she commanded, toes splaying, then falling still. She moved it again for good measure, and the foreign foot bounced in place.

_Be calm._

She stared at the limbs, her chest rising and falling. If the paws were hers, she thought with a creeping chill, then it stood to reason that the rest of her must be just as beast-like.

With a slow turn of her head she inspected her new body.

Where once she was lean and clothed and Elven, now she was grey and black and white and furred, with a bur laden tail curled over her hind legs. Her clothes, her armour, her weapons, they were nowhere to be seen.

A wolf then. Or some kind of dog, perhaps.

Her mind went immediately to _him_ , because how could it not. It could only be his doing. Somehow, for some reason.

But even as she thought it she knew it was a ludicrous notion. Just yesterday she'd received reports that he'd been spotted far to the north in a skirmish with June. A skirmish her informant had called 'hopelessly one-sided' in favour of Fen'Harel, and she'd had the audacity to breathe a sigh of relief.

Out of the corner of her eye, she'd noted Leliana's brows as they arched upwards. She could hardly blame her.

True, he had the eluvians, but relocating an army, even with the use of the mirrors, was an unwieldy task, and moving to confront Falon'Din alone so soon on the heels of June seemed unwise.

If not him then, who? Morrigan was a shape changer, but only as it pertained to her own body. She'd shown herself to be more than capable, taking on creatures as immense as a dragon or as understated as a raven - creators knew what else - but if she'd bestowed her powers of transformation on others Lavellan had yet to see it. Even Mythal's daughter had a limit to her powers.

It was a mystery to be solved at a later date. For now, Lavellan appeared to be in good health and in no immediate danger. Nothing new hurt, there was no blood, and other than the now familiar ache of her lungs - a legacy from the anchor - all was about the same as she'd left it.

More or less.

Perhaps it was a dream. Another vivid trip to the Fade like she'd done when she'd been in possession of the anchor proper, and not just the tainted echoes of it that now worked their way through her blood. And if that was case - if this was a dream - then it was only a matter of time before she woke.

The thought was a small reassurance, though part of her had her doubts. If it was the Fade, surely there would be some manner of floating rock or upside down tree around - something casually upsetting. Some bright blue bear would amble by, or a stream would run uphill and give it all away.

Dream or no, it hardly seemed advisable to stay put. Falon'Din's forces stalked the forests in the waking world and demons roamed the Fade, ripped from their hiding spots by the fears and cruelties of men and elf alike. Rolling about in the forest would do little to distance her from either.

She took a deep breath and willed herself to stand, hauling herself onto three pale paws, but it was an awkward affair, and as she stood, she felt her soft new ears press against her head. A tail, held low against her body, was an entirely new sensation, and an entirely new limb.

Around her, cicadas trilled in the summer heat.

"Take a deep breath," she said aloud, but what spilled forth was a jumble of sounds unlike anything she'd ever made before, a rolling of round vowels from a mouth unsuited to speech. Her new mouth was full of jutting, curved teeth, and her tongue was suddenly far too long to be practical. It lolled from her mouth, and it took a moment to set it to rights.

It was an afternoon brimming with indignities.

_This is not the strangest thing to ever happen to you_ , she told herself, swaying on the spot as she reminded her canine body to stay balanced. It was precariously close to it, though. She kept her head low, legs splayed, ears alert for any movement in the nearby woods, but aside from birdsong and the buzz of insects, there was nothing. No Cullen, no Harding, and thankfully none of the owl's soldiers.

_Seems smart to leave some kind of sign that you were here, in case Harding comes looking._

She nodded at her own internal dialogue, but when she peered at her immediate surroundings she could see nothing that might help. The summer heat had long since baked any mud to dust, and her blunted paws seemed poorly suited to writing in any case.

Still.

Just beside her, next to the fallen log were a number of sticks. Some were spindly, useless things, some thick with lichen and ready to crumble to pieces, but there was one, sturdy and gently curved, that seemed promising.

Lavellan reached forward with a paw and batted it closer, smacking it until the stubborn thing came within reach. She leaned down and grasped the stick between sharp teeth, then, tilting her head, pressed the tip to the moss and did her best to scratch a straight line. The moss came apart and crumbled in clumps, and the arrow she'd been attempting to draw looked like nothing more than a scuffed up bit of ground. Even she could hardly read it as such.

Huffing in exasperation, she stood in place, willing a plan B into existence. When none did, she dropped the stick and sighed - a sound that translated perfectly from elf to beast. She glanced farther into the forest. If she wanted to find her people, she would have to go to them.

Assuming Harding and Cullen had made it back to the Dalish camp in one piece - and she refused to believe they hadn't - she would need to travel west to reunite with them. It was likely that the camp would move shortly, if it hadn't already, but the location of their earlier campsite would be as good a place to start as any.

With all the grace of a hungover Sera she took a first step towards the thicket. Another followed.

It was an unfamiliar rhythm that she found herself moving in as she started through the underbrush. Gone was the steady one-two of her trusty feet, replaced by two steps on narrow paws and a quick hop as her front leg moved to keep herself from falling - a feat that it didn't always succeed at. With every fall, she became quicker at righting herself, and soon, as the afternoon shadows stretched longer still, she scarcely toppled over at all.

It was beginning to seem less and less like a dream, and more like cruel trick.

*****

To the north, Ghilan'nain swept into a deep bow, the picture of courtesy, while behind her elves in blood writing - both faded and fresh - shifted, waited, and watched.

"This alliance will benefit both my people and yours, Fen'Harel."


	2. Hospitality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A far too relaxed Ghilan'nain and prickly Solas discuss their new alliance, distasteful as the idea is, while Falon'Din gathers his forces in the south.

Ghilan'nain lounged, an arm over the back of the chair as her gaze traveled around the interior of his spartan tent, the moss green canvas wrapping them in shadow as the last of the sun's rays crept under the fabric door.

It had been only a day since he'd agreed to the truce - her people hadn't yet finished setting up camp on the far side of the meadow and she was already draped over his furniture like she owned it.

"History's been kind to you, hasn't it? They tell me they don't even care to see your likeness in their camps. They don't know much, these things, but they know a traitor when they see one."

The mother of the halla reached back to straighten the strap of a gown that was far too fine for a forward camp, her brow furrowed as she plucked at the delicate fabric. 

"Wine, Ghilan'nain?" 

She exhaled in lieu of an answer. 

"I will assume that was a 'no'." 

Solas poured himself a modest cup and set the bottle on the small wooden table next to her chair. The wine was Antivan, a vintage only a handful of years old, but he'd taken a liking to the spicy, almost peppery notes that reminded him so much of wine from Skyhold's busy little kitchen.

"How you can even drink it is beyond me. It's completely lifeless - like they pressed the fruit and served it the same day." 

"It's not without some merit," he said, and as if to demonstrate he tipped back the cup, the wine dry and pleasant on his tongue. 

"Your taste is atrocious," she said with a smile.

"And yet here you are."

"You know why I'm here, as your spies have no doubt informed you. I'd assumed we would've had the sense to work together and deal with you straightaway, but apparently 'every man for himself' was more a more appealing strategy for us. You must be pleased."

 _Us_ and _we_. Telling that she still considered herself Evanuris first, independent entity second.

"Sharing was never a strong suit." Solas remained standing, in part because he had no desire to lower herself to her level, and in part because the only other piece of furniture in the tent was the narrow, neatly made bed. 

When Ghilan'nain had stepped from the forest to the borders of his camp, alone and unarmed, he'd assumed a rather obvious ploy, but her pleading had an edge of unflattering desperation to it, and beyond that, an alliance between the two of them made a certain amount of sense. For both parties. His own mirrored desperation had permitted her to enter his camp, and his curiousity had granted her an audience.

He alone stood little chance against the combined powers of the Evanuris, and even though the once-gods had erupted into infighting the moment they'd freed themselves from the weakened mirror, on their own each was still a force to be reckoned with. 

It would be foolish not to seek help at this point. And prideful.

"We'll never find Dirthamen until you confront his brother, and even then I doubt he'll bother to show. I'd be more concerned with his cult, or whatever's left of it at this point. He was always too happy to let them concoct all manner of sordid rituals. I doubt that's changed." 

"Mm." 

"I can't say I'm sorry about June," she continued. "He was only really good for one thing, and even then he talked too much. What did you do with his corpse?"

"It is not important, Ghilan'nain." 

"Sylaise will be furious. Do you have his orb?"

"I do," said Solas, elaborating no further.

"And Elgar'nan's?" She crossed her legs, letting the gauzy material slip from her knee, exposing an artful amount of bare skin. 

"I had heard that he and Andruil clashed immediately upon waking," said Solas, answering with caution.

"By killing one another, they did your work for you," she clarified.

Solas watched her from over the edge of the cup, but if she felt strongly about Andruil's demise she was careful not to show it. Which was concerning. "They were always oil and water," he said, remaining as neutral as the situation would allow. "For their people's sake, I was sorry to hear it ended as it did."

"That's cute. How many do you have now?"

"Two," he said, and it was not a lie. "Andruil's was damaged beyond repair, as was my own." 

"I have mine. Sylaise and Falon'Din must still have theirs, though Dirthamen is anyone's guess."

He nodded.

"My orb is very different from yours. Even if you managed to take it, I doubt it would help you achieve what you're after." Her sandal slipped from her downturned foot and dropped to the woven rug. She made no move to retrieve it, and kept her eyes focused on his.

"I have no intention of harming you while Falon'Din yet lives. That is the entire concept behind an alliance."

"You think very little of me, don't you?"

"Yes," he said.

"Why is that, Fen'Harel?" She swept her pale hair over her shoulder and fixed him with a steady, unreadable gaze. 

"Because you turned down my hospitality," he said, choosing only her most recent slight rather than focusing on the scores of atrocities that preceded it.

"I turned down your wine, not your hospitality." And the corner of her mouth pulled into a coquettish smile.

Solas set his cup on the table. "I am not June." 

"The idea can't be _that_ distasteful to you." Her eyes darted to the bed, as he knew they would.

"I plan to move south in three days," he said, cutting across her. "Your general will need to be present at our next meeting, and your forces should be prepared for ambushes, likely at night - Falon'Din does not yet have the strength for an open attack."

She sighed, slipping her toes back into her sandal. "My people will be ready."

There was a long pause between them.

Like a cat waking from an afternoon nap, Ghilan'nain stood and stretched, her smooth back arching under the loose folds of her gown. "We'll talk again in the morning then. Have your people stay on their side of the field or I can't promise what will become of them." 

"I will say this once," she said, looking him over from head to toe. "I know you'll betray me again, and I plan to do the same to you, but Falon'Din will join his precious dead before I do. I hope you'll extend me the same courtesy, even if I doubt you can resist the temptation."

"Sleep well, Ghilan'nain."

And she ducked her head under the cloth door and stepped outside, the canvas falling back into place with a graceless flop. 

Solas went to the wooden table and poured himself a glass of wine twice as large as the first.

****

His favourite part of the day during his brief time with the Inquisition had always been dusk. It was a time for making camp, for starting fires and cooking hot meals and freeing oneself from damp, cold boots. For listening to Varric's stories or Sera's bewildering observations or Iron Bull's crude jokes.

As he made his way though the camp - his camp - the people were busying themselves in a similar vein. Morale was high. The success of their last battle was still fresh in their minds, and as he navigated the temporary village he could feel their hopeful energy, almost a tingle on his skin.

The people were still glad to see him. Some nodded, others bowed - short and subtle or else grand and sweeping, nearly to the ground. Still others, usually mortal, stood stock still, their nerves failing, unable to decide which route to take. A young Dalish woman in faded vallaslin softened her gaze as he passed and he looked elsewhere, his heart still too raw to linger on such reminders. 

To sit at a fire, to tell a story or make plans, to eat plain, uninspiring rations and be glad of them - those days were gone, and would never be again. 

When he returned to his tent some time later night had fallen in earnest on the valley. He reset his wards, and just beyond that, spirit sentinels stood guard on the other side of the tent's thin walls, ever watchful, ever faithful.

Solas climbed into bed and settled himself under his thin woolen blanket, listening to the sound of dying fires and quiet goodnights as others around him followed suit. 

He closed his eyes and stepped easily into the Fade.

Reminded by the young Dalish woman with the soft, dark eyes (and against his better judgement) he took a deep breath and reached for another young Dalish woman - slowly at first - stretching into the darkness, searching for her amongst the scores of dreamers, each making their own way though the Fade. 

She moved often, and sometimes great distances in little time - something that had been true in her Inquisition days as well, but that night she was nowhere to be seen, and even her trail, echoes of earlier dreams, was invisible to him.

He reached further, deeper, and though he found a great many Dalish and a handful of familiar shapes among the dreamers none of them were her. She was simply _not there._

_Vhenan._

Solas opened his eyes in the dark of the tent and his brows knit together. He would search again the following night and delay any action until then, but a slow, cold worry began to crawl through him - one he couldn't push away. He'd known from the moment they'd met that her death was inevitable, that if she wasn't killed outright that she would eventually succumb to the anchor, but it was one thing to know it was coming, and quite another to feel it happening.

He sighed and ran his hands over his face, and not for the first time that summer he found himself unable (and unwilling) to let sleep claim him.

Meanwhile, to the south, a grey wolf willed herself over a muddy, moonlit embankment on aching paws.


	3. Unpleasant People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan stumbles across Ghilan'nain's camp, and is completely over this shapeshifting nonsense.

  
"You look like shit!" She could hear Varric's jovial voice in her head, clear as a bell, and the imaginary version of her friend was spot on, as usual.

When she stopped to consider her appearance - fur wet and matted, missing a limb, burs and mud and creators knew what else clinging to her tail - she knew very few travelers would give her the time of day, let alone try to help.

Most, she wagered, would probably nock their bow, or perhaps throw a rock in her direction. If she was lucky they would miss.

She felt as good as she looked, too.

The anchor's slow march through her body hadn't abated, and indeed, seemed to have picked up the pace as she made her way through the woods. Lavellan was unnaturally tired, her feet sore, and when she coughed, even in her bedraggled looking wolf shape, the sound was rough and thick and doomed sounding, like a sickly maiden in one of the pulpy romance novels Cassandra had lent her.

_I may die like this._

It was a distressing thought, to say the least. To die alone, having never found her people to tell them she was alive, or managing to convince the Dalish holdouts that the Evanuris were actually deeply unpleasant people. Having never convinced _him_ to spare their broken, inelegant little world.

What an anticlimactic end it would be, to collapse in the woods under the ferns, never managing to tell off Cullen's dog for devouring the tops of her favourite leather boots.

She was thankful for the pangs of hunger that kept her focused on the moment, on the task at hand - finding something edible in a sea of green, bitter leaves.

A night and a day of walking (having once realized she was headed in the wrong direction) had begun to wear on her, and the idea of a warm meal was quickly becoming a pressing issue. Her stomach growled its displeasure, and once she'd growled back - the sound from her own throat making her start.

The Nevarran woods were brimming with food, but it was the kind of food one needed bows or snares or deadfalls to harvest, and though she'd managed to sniff out some mushrooms, they were unfamiliar to her, and bright orange. Though tempted, she'd opted to leave them be.

She still hadn't fully acclimatized to her new self. Colours were different, muted, and everything she'd come across smelled too intense, nearly overwhelming. The wildflower meadow she'd passed through had been a wall of perfume, bright and floral like an Orlesian gown shop, and the rotting nug she'd nearly stepped on had sent her reeling.

Eventually, the thick, dark forest had given way to gently rolling hills and open, sun-dappled woods, and it was about then it dawned on her that she was nowhere near where she needed to be. The land here felt wilder, roadless, still the domain of beasts, not men.

For a time she followed a stream, lapping up the cool water when the heat grew to be too much. She was on the lookout for the wheel ruts of aravels or the churned up earth from spurred horse hooves - any sign of elf or human inhabitants, but she'd yet to find it.

Finally, as the sun began to edge towards the horizon and the warm afternoon light began to take on cool purples and blues, and as she'd resigned herself to another cold night alone, she ran nose first into civilization.

From the top of a low hill she could make out the peaks and cooking fires of a large camp, clearly elven, but evidently not Falon'Din's. From what she'd seen of the Friend of Death, he tended to make it abundantly clear which camps were his, with great, blue banners of irritable looking owls hanging from every surface. Even having never met the man, he was every bit the unlikable narcissist that Solas had painted him as.

 _Well that's rich, seeing as the eye of the Inquisition is likely still dashed across half of Thedas_ , she thought, her tone admonishing.

 _That's... I suppose you're not wrong_ , she told herself.

This camp was different. There were banners, to be sure, but they were red, and smaller - so small she couldn't yet make them out, and they seemed less for her benefit than for those within.

But hunger gnawed at her, the pads of her paws had begun to crack and bleed and the anchor's symptoms were intensifying. She'd stopped to catch her breath, and when she had the prickling, constricting heat in her lungs and the racking coughs were a reminder of just how little time remained.

She held her knotted tail low, and with a tentative step, moved from the safety of the underbrush into the clearing, ears forward, listening for the telltale sound of a drawn bowstring.

But no arrows came.

Instead, a lone woman had begun walking across the meadow, moving towards her with an easy, confident grace. By her shape she was Elvhen, certainly not Dalish or city elf, but despite being one of his people her body language didn't seem hostile. Lavellan lifted her ears, sniffing the air, but the smokey scent of campfires masked anything she might've uncovered.

The figure came closer - close enough for Lavellan to make out her features. She was lovely, in an approachable kind of way, with long, pale hair that looked as soft as Cullen's favourite mantle, but she was surprisingly short for her kind. Almost her own height, she supposed, though in truth it was difficult to tell from two feet off the ground.

And then the woman was before her, and her voice when she spoke was a song in its rhythm, and ancient and unknowable, completely opaque to the former Inquisitor.

Lavellan stood, watching, and as she watched the woman gestured a welcome, and a dozen childhood tales fell into place in one fleeting moment.

"Ghilan'nain."

In her shock she'd said it aloud, though the sound came out a jumbled wheeze, and her embarrassment was sudden and profound. Her ears flattened.

The former god only smiled and turned, headed back towards the camp in the distance.

With few other options and a stomach howling its displeasure, Lavellan followed.

***

The bare faced ones were lovely in their own way, though the absence of blood writing reminded him far too strongly of Fen'Harel. It would have to be remedied at some point.

The Dalish ones, however, were especially eager to please, Falon'Din had found. They bowed and addressed him, breathless, in their clunky little language, and when he looked them over, letting his eyes linger on their pleasing forms some of them blushed a fetching colour and glanced away, or else returned the look if they were feeling bold. It was all delightful, even if he could sense the ruffled feathers of his own people as they were passed over.

The woman before him was one of the new people, the Dalish people, and she'd passed him something on a sheet of paper, some report or another, and he'd captured her hand and drawn her closer. She'd resisted, but only for a moment, and when he'd pulled her towards him, purring endearments older than ruins into her ear, she'd bitten her bottom lip and smiled.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a set-'em-up chapter for the next one, in which Solas gets real prickly.


	4. The Click of Claws

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas is restless. And suspicious, furious, lonely and determined. Lavallen is all these things, and still a wolf.

Ghilan'nain's main tent was a showy, elaborate affair, with red canvas walls trimmed in an even deeper crimson and embroidered with herds of halla as they leapt and reared and played together. In one corner, Lavellan saw a number of the elegant ungulates involved in what could only be called lurid sex, and even in her current state of exhaustion and wariness she managed a sort of half laugh, half bark of appreciation.

The playful halla tapered off at the main entrance, and were replaced by sloping, swirling letters whose ancient meaning she could only guess at. If she'd had hands, they might've ached in sympathy at the thought of all the minute stitch work.

She followed Ghilan'nain's trailing gown inside the tent and gathered a brief impression of an interior just as fine, with carved wooden furniture, soft layers of geometric rugs and warm lantern light muted by draped, diaphanous fabric. A raven and a regal owl roosted in the supports, nestled into their feathers, but Lavellan's interest in her surroundings (not to mention her immortal host) was set aside the moment a dish of food was placed before her. It was meat, and there was some manner of sweet sauce drizzled across it, but as to what animal it had been in life it was impossible to tell. Something delicious, to be sure. (So not nug.)

She put her muzzle into the golden bowl and devoured its contents in record time, and when the meat was gone she set to licking the sides clean. Josephine would've been appalled, she knew, but Josephine was probably hundreds of miles away, furiously penning inquiries as to Lavellan's whereabouts.

When she was done the dish was spotless. Her long tongue accidentally licked her own nose, and she sneezed.

Ghilan'nain herself had drifted away at some point during the meal, but when Lavellan looked up she'd returned, with what looked to be one of her own hairbrushes. The pretender god knelt at her side to retrieve the bowl, and as she placed a hand on Lavellan's aching shoulder she murmured something that felt like an invitation. Solas had been right, so long ago, when he'd chastised Sera for not embracing the rhythm behind his language. If she relaxed and let the sounds wash over her, she could almost make out their meaning.

Speaking it was still a problem, however, so Lavellan said nothing in reply, and Ghilan'nain began the long process of brushing out two days worth of matted fur, starting along her back.

Lavellan felt a hesitance about the camp, despite the delicious food and the soothing motion of the brush. This was Ghilan'nain's domain. Ghilan'nain the Evanuris, keeper of slaves and maker of monsters. Fen'Harel wouldn't have shut her away for all time if she hadn't been truly terrible.

But it was difficult to see her as such at the moment. The Elvhen busying themselves around her tent seemed unafraid and, not unlike Solas, her appearance was far less intimidating than she'd imagined.

As if on cue, Ghilan'nain began humming a song unknown to Lavellan - a slow, sad cascade in minor notes - and reached for a tail still flecked with old mud.

Between the gentle humming, the quiet hooting of the owl and the dim light of the overhead lanterns it had become a fight to stay awake, even in such dangerous surroundings. So many questions needed immediate answers - had Cullen and the others escaped, where was she, how long would she be a wolf?

She put up a valiant effort, but it was a fight she was always doomed to lose, and it wasn't long after Lavellan set her head against the soft rug that she fell into a deep, impenetrable sleep.

***

That night, Solas' search proved just as fruitless as the previous.

Few spirits remained to inquire after - the majority had opted to give him a wide berth as word had spread of his return, and those who remained were unhelpful or belligerent, bordering on demon. One particularly irate spirit of courage had launched into a furious attack against him, and, loathed as he was to do it, Solas had been forced to nullify it.

It was possible she was dead. It was even _likely_ given the current climate and her worsening condition, but the dead too moved through the Fade, and she had not been among them. He would've felt it, he was certain.

Instead there was simply an absence, an uncomfortable void where she had been, and that void had begun to wear at him, even when his focus should be elsewhere.

He considered, however briefly, that it was an elaborate strategy of her own in an attempt to confound him, but he ruled it out after an inspection of Leliana's dreams had revealed a frantic sense of loss, Dorian's a grim determination as he struggled and fumbled his way through the Fade, searching.

There were few others with enough skill to obfuscate her from him, and all signs pointed to the remaining Evanuris. Certainly Dirthamen, possibly the others, though it was difficult to say with any certainty.

He woke, bristling with indignation and a renewed sense of purpose.

  
***

Lavellan awoke refreshed, having slept soundly through the night, but her dreams had been different since her transformation.

She was still her, but her elven concerns and thoughts had simply vanished from her sleeping mind. She dreamed as a wolf would, and spent the hours stalking food and worrying over a pack she'd misplaced, following their trail over the drifting sands of the Western Approach but never managing to close the gap between them. Whether that pack was her clan, the rebels of the former Inquisition or those of her people that had been pulled to the Dread Wolf's side, she could only guess.

Perhaps all three.

Her breathing had become less labored since she'd arrived the night before. Noticeably so.

She stood and took a deep breath, waiting for the anchor's ache to return, but like her mystery pack the feeling had simply vanished. Physically, (at least when it came to the anchor, for her muscles still ached) she felt wonderful. She hadn't felt this good in months.

Lavellan stretched from toe to tail, then shook out a coat now smooth and soft and a little fluffy. Ghilan'nain's gentle hands had even managed to remove the burs at the backs of her legs.

Ghilan'nain, who was nowhere to be seen.

It was a morning for answers, however, and the presence of preening deities would hinder more than help, even if she could speak her tongue.

Very few of Ghilan'nain's followers seemed to mind her presence, or indeed, look seriously in her direction, so Lavellan decided on a survey of the camp, starting from main tent.

Three halla stood just to the side of it, grazing, or else watching the to and fro of bustling elves, mortal and immortal alike, seemingly at home in an enclosure made of knotted white ribbon - more for show than anything else.

Like her own clan's halla they were a snowstorm of white, their dark eyes and flint hard hooves the only exception. They watched with keen interest as she approached, and as she peered upwards at them they paused to exchange glances between one another - a gesture Lavellen found unsettling. She decided not to linger.

The camp was, in some ways, like all camps. Chaotic, a little cramped, thick with the smell of campfires and woven through with paths of increasingly trodden grass. Lavellan picked a trail and followed it, pausing to sniff tents decorated with all manner of beasts, to watch spirits and listen to what conversations she could. Through it all she found herself left well enough alone, save a respectful nod now and then.

Which was strange in and of itself.

Over the course of the next hour it became clear that the camp was divided by an unspoken line, with the grand, embroidered tents of the ancient Elvhen at the centre, close to Ghilan'nain, and a ring of humble, weathered tents at the edges, where her own people set about their tasks. There were creatures on their tents as well, but painted by unskilled hands. There was a hierarchy at play, and all evidence pointed to it favouring someone other than her own people.

She frowned and carried on, the tentative warmth she'd been feeling for the Mother of Halla cooling somewhat.

And then the camp simply stopped, and where it ended a broad river of wildflowers started. A vast, treeless expanse where no elf cared to step.

Across it, the distance of two Orlesian ballrooms there was another camp, which she'd at first mistaken for part of Ghilan'nain's. But where Ghilan'nain's camp flew banners with white halla leaping across a field of red, the far camp had forest green banners.

Forest green banners depicting a snarling wolf, claws spread, eyes furious, a pack of fabric wolves flapping gently in the morning breeze.

Lavellan went cold.

***

  
  
By the way his people and the resident spirits stepped just out of the way, or took sudden interest in their boots (if indeed they wore them), Solas knew that his ill-humor had radiated outward.

Ghilan'nain's very presence had that effect on him, and he'd been curt almost to the point of rudeness on more than one occasion that morning, but when Abelas had found one of her spies among his camp his mood had shifted from irritable to furious. So devoted had the man been to the Halla's cause that he hadn't even bothered to deny it - a form of blind pride and pleased confidence so wholly ignorant that it sent a fresh spike of anger through Solas.

He'd been tempted to immolate the man on the spot and send his ashes back across the meadow to her ridiculous tent, but it was far too early in their tentative truce for such dramatic games, and death by flame seemed a needless cruelty for a man she'd likely never even met. He did the spy a kindness and crystallized the blood in his veins, ice crawling through vital organs, killing him in a matter of seconds.

"Be vigilant, there will be others," he told Abelas, who was already kneeling to retrieve the body. "I will return."

And Fen'Harel stalked through the camp in the direction of his self-proclaimed ally while spirits and elves alike parted for him, wind through a wheat field.

 


	5. Pebble and Magpie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has every right to be furious.

As she watched, the elves in his encampment went about their business, practicing their fighting form, repairing torn robes, even reading in the warm morning light.

Lavellan drew a deep, steadying breath, and buried a bud of envy that threatened to bloom. Even knowing what she did about Solas and his cause, the urge to simply walk across the field was a strong one. He might, she tried to reason, be able to help her return to her proper form, or clarify the matter of Ghilan'nain, or even just give her directions away from here.

_Or he might make a wolf hat to match his mantle._

She still wasn't sure of Ghilan'nain's motives as it pertained to her, but casually dropping in on the Dread Wolf seemed like a poor idea for a great many reasons. Still, he was so close...

_Let's calmly consider this, shall we?_

Lavellan sat, giving herself a moment to plan and to listen to her inner voice of reason. Listening to anything else at this point was likely to get her killed.

_It's possible two Evanuris bumped into one another and simply decided to camp in the same location. Maybe they both enjoyed the smell of buttercups and were willing to put aside their differences to share._

_But suppose it's as it looks, and Ghilan'nain and Fen'Harel are in bed together-_

Lavellan frowned, her furry brows pushing together.

_...Metaphorically, because no one camps that close to a mortal enemy. And if that is the case, you should consider going absolutely anywhere but towards that camp. Between it and the deepest, darkest Ferelden dungeon, filled to the rafters with blighted rats, the dungeon would probably still be a safer bet._

The wolf banners fluttered in the morning light, and she sighed.

At present she was free to move around the enemy's camp. She was free to listen in and watch surreptitiously. There was still time to turn this horrible week to her favour.

She would make another round, taking in their fortifications, their numbers, their patrols, then slip away at nightfall, hoping that the wards Ghilan'nain had no doubt placed around the meadow were more concerned with those coming, rather than going. If she was lucky, she could find a city or a friendly Dalish camp and send a raven to the others, then go from there.

It was Sera-level planning, but time was of the essence and she needed to return to Cullen and Leliana before they did something rash.

And besides, she'd done more with less.

With one last look over her shoulder, Lavellan turned away from the sight of the far camp and started for Ghilan'nain's main tent.

***

If his own people seemed on edge at his sour mood, Ghilan'nain's were audibly distressed by it.

They backed away in a hurry, gasping or muttering to one another as he strode into her camp, many of them retreating to the safety of their own tents. By stepping over the boundary that separated the two camps, Solas has snubbed proper protocol. The sentinels posted at the edge of her camp looked at a loss for what to do. None lifted a hand to stop him.

He knew where to find the former god - her magic pulled and shimmered even from the edges of her small settlement, and as he approached her tent her personal guardians gripped their staves with white knuckles, glancing to her for orders.

"Ghilan'nain."

"Fen'Harel. You have the look of a man who has matters to discuss."

"I do," he said. "And I have no wish to discuss them in public so I suggest -"

Just under her magic something shimmered a pale green.

Solas stopped.

The camp glimmered with a delicate magic that was distinctly hers, woven into the tents, lighting the lanterns and warding the perimeter, but there was something amiss. Something both foreign and familiar, nestled under layers of her enchantments.

He narrowed his eyes. She raised her brows in reply.

"Why do I sense Falon'Din's magic among your camp, Ghilan'nain?" He paused again, as if listening. "And his brother's. And that of Andruil?"

"It's nothing of consequence."

"You have been collecting again." It was not a question.

"A scout or a general here and there. I was hoping to salvage something of June before you routed him so swiftly."

"You have something of mine," he said, ignoring her inelegant attempt at flattery. Solas could sense his own magic from somewhere nearby, masked and muted, but there.

Ghilan'nain crossed her arms. "If you'll come to my tent, I have some wine that may be to your liking."

"No."

"Not a day ago you chided me for not accepting your hospitality, hahren, and you would do the same to me today? Are your whims so fickle?" She swept her braided hair over her shoulder, gaze fixed on him as she did.

He shut his eyes and took a slow, deep breath as he focused.

Ghilan'nain crossed her arms and waited, but not ten seconds had passed before she let them drop to her sides, hands balled. "...I may have collected one of yours, if you must be so stubborn."

"Hush," he commanded, still concentrating, and she stared.

"Despite what you may think, I accept no orders in my own camp! Return to yours and come back when you've re-learned the manners you so pride yourself on, wolf. I didn't spend so much of my life in your loathsome prison so I could be belittled upon leaving it."

Solas ignored her and stepped in the direction of her tent, past her hooded guardians, who raised their weapons but didn't follow through.

Behind a draped curtain, watching the proceedings he found a small grey wolf, missing a front paw. Her head was held low, as if readying herself to run, her chest rising and falling quickly.

_No._

He knelt just in front of her, eyes searching her own, and his fingers were gentle as they smoothed over the fur on her head, hesitant as they ran through the fur along her back.

It explained so much. She hadn't been missing from the Fade, he'd simply been searching in the wrong place, for the wrong thing.

She was alive, but this was an alternative that was hardly better than death. Like Ghilan'nain's prized halla, she must be a trophy. A novelty to remind a selfish creature of how clever she'd been. A souvenir forged from a stolen life. Above him an owl hooted, and Solas glanced up only long enough to confirm his suspicions. Ghilan'nain was a magpie, stealing trinkets from the Evanuris for her own sense of satisfaction.

His hands continued their search as he felt for injuries, brushing along her shoulders, touching her as one might hold a tiny songbird, while behind him, Ghilan'nain watched, and hand held up to still her guardians.

Solas leaned forward towards the soft, pointed ears of the wolf and whispered in common, a language those around him were unlikely to understand.

As he stood his eyes took on a hard edge.

***

"Close your eyes."

Solas turned and started for Ghilan'nain, closing the distance between them in long, purposeful strides, boots on packed earth. But as she watched, a massive black paw came down instead, then another, and when Lavellan made sense of what she was seeing, she was looking at an immense black wolf, his form looming over a Ghilan'nain that bristled with sharp, brittle magic.

A pair of red eyes opened, and the wolf spoke.

If Ghilan'nain's voice had been light and musical, the Dread Wolf's voice was a dropped pebble, bouncing off the sides of a darkened well but never hitting bottom. It was the stricken face of a messenger as they delivered a missive about a loved one, or the sudden stillness of air before a violent storm.

Lavellan recoiled, and saw as she did that she was far from the only one. The nearby halla behind her tossed their heads and fled to the far side of their enclosure, and all but Ghilan'nain's most stoic guardians tripped over themselves in an attempt to back away. Any nearby spirits simply vanished.

"Close your eyes," he'd said, but it was impossible to look away. Where once there was only Solas, albeit dressed in finer clothing, there was now the Dread Wolf, the very air around him choked with the smell of smoke and rust and long forgotten ruins.

Ghilan'nain stood in place, eyes narrowed, and her reply was clipped and fierce. Whatever he had said to her, she was far from pleased. What she uttered next was through gritted teeth, and an unmistakable threat.

It was not received well.

The Dread Wolf's growl shook the very ground beneath Lavellan's paws, and as she watched two more pairs of eyes opened, their bright red glowing against the lacquered black of his fur. Six eyes shone the colour of a newly opened wound, and Lavellan could watch no more. She shut her eyes as tight as they would go and pushed her face against the ground, tail between her legs, her remaining limbs shaking.

Still the two argued, Ghilan'nain launching into a long, staccato assault, the Dread Wolf rumbling his replies, Elvhen words forced from between curved, cruel fangs.

Lavellan focused on her breathing - one in, one out - but even her capacity for that began to blur at the edges. She had a momentary vision of the dead Qunari in the library, years before, their faces frozen in fear as they died, and she understood their last moments to very core.

Time seemed to distort, stretching on forever. She hadn't even realized she was howling until she felt a hand on her shoulder, warm but firm. When she managed to silence herself, it was only by clenching her jaws together. Lavellan felt herself being lifted from the ground and settled into a pair of arms, but she dared not open her eyes yet. Not at the risk of joining the Qunari in their fate.

And then time snapped back into place, and she could hear the brushing of long grass against legs and smell the buttercups as she was brought across the meadow.

 


	6. Twenty Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan attempts to explain her predicament.

The pads of her paws had barely touched the rug in his tent before she'd begun backing away, her heart hammering in her chest. When her back bumped into the edge of his wooden table she stopped, but it was with flattened ears and a tail twice its normal size.

The last tendrils of his magic had slipped away as they'd crossed the open field, but the sight of the unnatural creature he'd become had embedded itself firmly in her mind, and though time would surely blunt the edges, she doubted if the image would ever truly leave.

With their relaxed poses and fuzzy moss nestled between their toes, the statues lounging at the edges of Dalish camps were completely inadequate when it came to depicting the most feared of the gods.  Even the crude paintings of sharp, snapping jaws on clan shields and aravel sails did the Dread Wolf no justice. To truly achieve the effect they would have to convey the sickening sense of foreboding that accompanied those jaws, or the creeping chill of a violent nightmare that took place in the same room as one slept. They would need to capture the feeling of one's imminent death.

But it wasn't the Dread Wolf who stood before her then, but Solas, dressed well but simply in somber greens and polished browns, with expertly crafted grey gloves and a matching cloak that would soon be too warm for the day's heat. The wolf bone necklace was gone, but so too was the fur mantle she'd last seen him in.

His previous set of armour, with its golds and silvers and inlaid leaves had been impressive indeed, but there was a stern practicality to his current choice that spoke of action.

His expression was one of intense concern.

Neither made any move to communicate during the first minute, and he was careful to keep his distance, standing just to the side of the entrance. Even if she'd been capable of speech, his sudden appearance in Ghilan'nain's camp and the events that followed had left her at a complete loss. Where could she even begin?

She kept her gaze fixed on his.

As he was the only one in the tent capable of it, Solas cleared his throat and spoke.

"It was unwise..."

He paused and ran a hand across his mouth, reconsidering.

Then, for a time, he said nothing, merely watched, and his gaze darted along her small form as if attempting to work out a particularly crafty puzzle.

A moment later he sighed. "I would be lying if I said I had not wished to you again, but it was a selfish, cruel wish, and surely not like this."

He took a step forward, hand outstretched, and she swallowed and backed up further, shaking the table and rattling the ink pots as her hind quarters pressed against the table leg. A dip pen rolled from the table and bounced harmlessly off her back.

His expression turned pained, and the hand was hastily drawn back.

"What you saw... That version of myself is one meant solely for my enemies, never our mutual acquaintances, and _never_ you."

Silence settled itself between them again, thick and uncomfortable, neither of them sure how to proceed.

"I would see you returned to your people immediately," he said, and she turned her head to face him fully. "But it would seem Ghilan'nain has complicated the matter beyond my abilities. Were you injured?"

She nearly snorted in disbelief. 'Complicated the matter' was putting it far too delicately for her tastes, but the vision of his red eyes blinking, one after another, stilled any glib reply she may have tried to make.

After a beat, she shook her head. It was true, she was unharmed from a physical standpoint, though being pinned in the body of another creature was certainly distressing enough. There was fur  _everywhere_.

"Your people are nearby, I would imagine?"

Again she shook her head, though she could elaborate no further, even if she'd wished to.

He swept his cloak to the side and knelt in one fluid motion, and as he did she could hear the creak of his leather boots as he settled in front of her.

His movements had always been considered, elegant, even in combat, but where Solas moved with a casual grace Fen'harel carried himself in a manner that left nothing open to debate. He was self-assured, his posture perfect, not unlike the many ancient archer statues they'd seen in their travels. His mouth was a thin, determined line, and if he kept his brow knitted together any longer it might threaten to stay that way.

Outside she could hear calm returning to the meadow, and inside, the waves of her fear had begun to recede like the tide, and under them all she could feel the edges of herself once more. Lavellan drew a breath, and was grateful when she found it didn't shake.

"I will give you some ti-"

"Fen'Harel." A voice came from just outside the tent.

"Come in." And Solas stood as the door parted and a spirit made of swirling greens and blues drifted inside, fixing her with a searching look. Curiously, she thought, they spoke in the common tongue.

"Ghilan'nain is furious. She claims you killed one of her halla, but her people seemed to have escaped unharmed."

Solas turned from the wolf, but not without some doing. "Excellent." Whether he referred to Ghilan'nain's fury or to the state of her people it was difficult to say. "We have waited long enough. Tell the people we leave in the morning."

As the two spoke the fallen pen caught her eye. She stepped forward and took it between her jaws, the taste of black ink bitter against her tongue.

Solas turned, and the spirit stilled as she pushed onto her hide legs and steadied herself with her front paw against the edge of the table. Pen still between her teeth, she sniffed among Fen'Harel's papers and pushed her nose against the ink pot. This would take some doing.

"Perhaps we may assist."

Solas stepped across the room and removed his gloves to retrieve a clean sheet of parchment, and when his outstretched arm brushed against her fur she bit down on the wooden handle. He moved away again momentarily, setting the open ink pot and the paper on the ground within her easy reach. She dropped back to her front paw and limped to the paper.

Holding the pen firmly in her teeth, she twisted her head and aimed the nib towards the ink. It took some doing, but eventually she managed to push the tip into the well, and when she lifted her head black ink coated the nib.

For the second time in her life she was confronted by the question of what to say to a man intent on her destruction, and a single drop of ink gathered at the end of the nib as she considered her next move.

Turn me back.  
Where are we.  
"I had plans"  
Is June dead  
F'D in SW  
How could you.  
Ghilan'nain???  
scratch L ear  
Map please  
STOP

When she'd decided, she sidestepped to the paper, committing herself to looking even more ridiculous in front of her spectators. Once more she turned her head and pressed the tip to the parchment.

"Small wolf, you need only ask one of us to translate for you. Your feelings are clear as a stream, and your loyalty is true."

The spirit's voice was deep and feminine, not at all unpleasant, but it was one thing to let Cole in, and another entirely to let a stranger probe her thoughts. She carried on as if she hadn't heard.

It was difficult to gauge pressure, but when she dragged the pen downward she was pleased to see a black, unbroken line from the corner of her eye. She'd managed to make a half decent straight line when the nib caught on the parchment and spattered ink across the paper, the rug and her nose. In her surprise she dropped the pen.

Solas knelt again, watchful, but unable to assist as she struggled to reclaim the quill and remain upright at the same time. When she moved to load the pen with more ink and instead overturned the ink pot, days of frustrations - large and small - got the better of her, and she growled deep in her throat and tossed the useless thing to the ground. In the next moment the parchment was between her jaws, crumpled and damp and torn nearly in half.

"Devotion, thank you." Solas gestured for the spirit to leave them, and Devotion inclined their head and drifted outside without another word.

"If you will permit me, Inquisitor, a short trip to the Fade may be able to help. Once there, it should allow you to resume your true self for a time."

She nodded, putting aside the use of her former title for a later time. She was willing to try anything if it meant she could speak, even if that meant stepping into the Fade with the Dread Wolf.

Again Solas moved to kneel before her, regal, lovely as ever, his features still etched with grief, and he placed the tips of his fingers just below her ears. The simple gesture washed her with familiarity and beneath the scent of ash and leather she could still find traces of old tomes and dried mud and strawberry jam. Fen'Harel smelled suspiciously like his predecessor.

He watched her wordlessly for a time, then closed his eyes in concentration.

Taking it as her cue to follow, she shut her own eyes, however reluctantly.

And then...

Lavellan was dreaming again.

She was running at a slow lope when her paws strayed from the path, leading her down a rocky embankment so deep in the conifers that no light reached the forest floor. The air smelled of pine and moss and wet, wet rocks and her ears could pick out the sound of a small stream ahead.

Around a nurse log and over a boulder and there it was, clear and cool and all for her.

She stepped to the edge, the water soaking the fur between her toes and she leaned in to drink, but as she did there was a movement of something dark, something just opposite her, and she lifted her gaze from the swirling water.

A dark wolf stood across the rocky stream, and at once she knew him as one of her missing pack. He was all familiar shapes, and welcome to her water, and after a huff of greeting she bounded across the river stones to meet him.

He remained where he was, his posture stiff and alert, and as she moved to touch his nose with her own water pooled around her legs, chilling her feet. His lack of a response prompted another round of greeting. She wagged her tail and bowed and when he still didn't reply, she climbed from the water and moved in close enough to rest her head along the back of his neck.

And instead of the note of greeting she was expecting he made a series of sounds so foreign and unwelcome that her felted ears turned sharply backwards and she nearly tripped as she backed away.

And the world around her lurched and dropped away into blackness.

When she opened her eyes next there were no trees to be seen, and the cool shadows of the forest had been replaced with the warm glow of candles and lanterns against an intricate stone ceiling not unlike the one at the library at Vir Dithara.

Indeed, when her eyes focused and she could make out the shapes around her, she knew at once that it  _was_ Vir Dirthara.

She groaned and put her hand to her face, feeling a nose in lieu of a snout, small, blunted teeth and a notable lack of fur. "What happened to the stream?"

"Nothing. I assume it is where we left it," a voice said, and her heart seized. "But something has happened to you."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Accidentally jumped tenses a few times, yikes yikes yikes. I have some traveling to do for the next two weeks, so if I'm not able to update on the road/in the air, I'll do it just as soon as I get home. :)


	7. Put Down Your Bow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An all too brief flashback to less complicated days.

*** Three and a Half Years Earlier ***

"That song, where does it originate?"

Lavellan ceased her humming and glanced upwards, to a seated Solas who held his cup of water with pale, shaking hands, eyes half lidded.

Heatstroke had taken its toll on all of them at one time or another in the Approach, but the morning had dawned especially bright, with not a cloud in the sky, and in his haste to start the day Solas had neglected to cast a sun protection spell on himself - an oversight he'd grudgingly lamented as they paused mid-afternoon to allow him time to rest.

The two sat together in the shade of an immense overhang, the red rock formation above them large enough to shade not just them, but the entire party - horses included - the animals napping a short distance away. Just down the slope where the rock turned into sand, Varric and Bull dealt another round of cards in what had to be the sleepiest game of Lion's Paw she'd ever seen.

With Solas inert, she'd settled herself by his feet and drew his leg into her lap. Before he could protest, she'd begun adjusting the weave of a loose leg wrap that had flapped behind him, threatening to catch on the underbrush. It'd been bothering her all day. He'd blinked, but was far too weak too put up a proper fight.

"It's..."

"Dalish?" He licked his cracked lips and set his head against the smooth stone wall behind him.

"Yes. _'Put down your bow'_. It's always been popular with clans in the Free Marches, though I've heard it mentioned farther south."

"It sounded quite lovely."

Lavellan smiled - a lopsided thing - and held two fingers against the long strip of leather to keep the tension while she worked. "Oh, it sounds pretty enough, but the accompanying dance is lurid. Bull and Sera would be delighted. ...I've known a clan that banned it outright." She paused. "A very boring clan."

His eyes opened again, but just barely, and a smile of his own crept into his voice. "You sound fond of it."

Her smile evened out into something broad and damning. Solas laughed quietly into his cup.

"It's about a young hunter who hasn't caught a single thing all summer, and her reputation begins to suffer. In order to strengthen her place in the clan, she goes into the woods to catch a stag, but they manage to elude her for days."

Over and under went her practiced hands, weaving, looping, testing the wrap to make sure it wasn't too snug against his leg.

"Finally, when she's just about to give up and return home she sees a beautiful red stag, and instead of stalking it with her bow she sets them aside and sings to it in an attempt to seduce it."

"And does it work?"

"It does. It comes close enough for her to touch."

"And then what?"

"It depends. In some versions she successfully kills it, in some it kills her, but in most she rides away with it into the forest. Presumably to do something the Chantry would just love."

"I assume your clan favored the latter?"

Her gaze darted towards him then back to the wrappings, but she stayed conspicuously silent.

She could see the corner of his mouth pull upwards, but when she turned to look at him his face was once more a neutral mask.

"I saw that," she said, nimble fingers smoothing over his leg.

"So you _have_ danced it."

"I haven't heard you sound this pleased since the night the kitchens made lemon tarts," she said, brows lifting, eyes focused on the last of her work. "I _may_ have danced it for someone."

"Did the object of your affections accept the gift? Did you catch your stag?"

She tucked the end neatly into the weave and gave his leg a light pat. "Why would I tell you that, when you have a perfectly good imagination, hahren."

Solas made a thoughtful sound. "A wise decision, Inquisitor." And he set aside his cup, now empty. "Do you remember the steps?"

"'Steps' is a generous term for a dance that's done with hips."

"Ahh. Well, it would appear I have nowhere to be."

"It's funny, when I first met you I didn't assume the man in the green coat would be utterly incorrigible, and yet here we are." Lavellan moved to sit beside him, pressing her back against the cool stone. "One day," she promised, and leaned in to set a kiss against the curve of his jaw. "When there aren't giant spiders trying to chew us into paste," she purred by his sunburned ear.

"Forgive my self-serving curiousity, but what _did_ you assume?"

She rested her head against his shoulder, and saw that his fingers has stopped their trembling. Never one to miss an opportunity, she slipped her fingers through his, and the gesture was accepted with a warm squeeze.

"At least I won't be alone up here."

*** Current Day ***

She found herself laid out on a long library table. Its surface was stacked here and there with musty smelling books and piled in places with scrolls, speckled every now and then with black, matte ink. On the far side of the table stood Fen'Harel, his eyes intent, his posture alert.

Not for the first time in her life, Lavellan marveled at how surreal it had all turned out, but the thought was quickly shaken away.

She used her good arm to push herself from the table and turned to face the rebel god, her worn boots light on the old stone floor. In the dream she wore what she'd been wearing days before as she hunted alongside Cullen - Dalish armour in browns and greens, the silver mail tinkling musically along her arms as she shifted under it. It was a familiar, welcome weight.

"It was never my intention to be here," she said, breaking the silence, her voice low, and part of her noted that the sound came out as full words and not yelps or snarls.

"I know," he said, and his brows pushed upwards.

"What happens now?" She said, steadying herself against the table with her hand. Moving from three legs to two had done little for her sense of balance.

His gaze went momentarily to her left arm, then returned to her face, and he gestured to a chair at the end of the long table. "Please sit. I must speak to you before Ghilan'nain claims you once more."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to updating now that I'm back from my trip! :)


	8. The Reading Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas and Lavellan sit down for an honest chat in the library.

"What do you know of Ghilan'nain?"

Solas sat at the opposite end of the study table, eyes keen, gloved hands resting lightly against the wood. Unbeknownst to him, his right elbow appeared to be covering some manner of ancient graffiti - from where she sat Lavellan could just make out a crude stick figure with disproportionately large breasts notched into the surface. She might've laughed under normal circumstances, but these were far from normal circumstances and if she started, she might never stop.

As to the question itself, it was difficult to answer in present company.

She took a breath and knitted her brow as she considered. Anything she replied would be completely inaccurate, the product of thousands of years of fabrication and elaboration at the hands of well-meaning Keepers. This was a woman Solas had known deeply, for more years than Lavellan could fathom, and all she had at her disposal were moralizing folk tales and the scraps of research she'd uncovered over the course of the last year. It was an embarrassing position to find herself in.

She sighed and dropped her gaze to the table before her, and as she did a small book materialized by her hand. It was clad in white halla leather, the curves and spirals of the elegant creature's horns inlaid in silver along the immaculate spine. She lifted the book and the weight of it felt somehow right. It felt like a part of herself.

"This," she said, realizing the thought to be true with each word she spoke. "Everything I know of her is here." She set the book down, and with a look of grim determination slid it across the table to the far end where he sat.

Solas stopped the book with the flat of his hand and picked it up. He opened it to the first page with a careful touch, and the sound of his fingers brushing against the smooth pages was not unpleasant, a reminder of the times they spent reading together, locked away from their obligations in Skyhold's tallest tower.

For a time he sat, leafing through the book, and he looked up only when she finally spoke.

"If I asked the same of you, what would that look like?"

Solas mulled over the question. Then, as Lavellan watched, each book in the surrounding room (save a handful on the table) shimmered and shifted, their colourful canvas and leather covers vanishing, replaced a moment later by white and silver binding to match her own book. He lowered her meager little novella but kept it in hand, while behind him, thick tomes framed him in a sea of white.

Lavellan set her chin in her hand and peered around the reading room at the obscene number of books. "Well. I walked right into that one, didn't I?"

"I have no wish to gloat. The situation would be reversed were we speaking of other matters."

It was a generous sentiment, but seeing as he had lived lifetimes longer than she had (and he was, after all, the most famous liar in all of creation), it was also likely horribly untrue.

"Perhaps," she said, and it was impossible to keep the melancholy from her voice.

"Your people know Ghilan'nain as a benevolent creator of the animals, is that fair to say?"

"You know that's true, Solas," she answered, and for the first time in days she felt the familiar scratching in her lungs return, a cough creeping up her throat.

He nodded. "The Dalish are not wrong, she did create a great many animals that walk the world and swim in the seas."

" _But.._." Lavellan lifted her head from her hand, the word lingering in the air between them.

"But that is far from all. Magic can be powerful in the right hands..." Solas continued.

"And in the wrong ones."

"... but it cannot create life from nothing. No mage in my world or yours has ever had the power to draw forth that which was not already there. Ghilan'nain's creatures, the beasts that she so loved, were molded from those around her. She stole the bodies and spirits from those she considered lesser to perfect her experiments."

Lavellan's brows pushed down. "Against their will?"

"They were, from time to time, willing followers, but were more often slaves cruelly pulled apart and reassembled as she saw fit. She used her magic to craft distractions for herself, then let Andruil hunt them when their novelty wore thin."

"She created impossible monstrosities from whomever she could get her hands on - servants, lovers, defeated enemies. The Qunari are her doing, a people crafted from both elf and dragon in a barbaric act of curiousity. Indeed, she once drowned hundreds of our people in an attempt to create a new school of sea creatures, and even the nugs are nothing more than -"

"Why are you telling me this!" Lavellan stood, interrupting his litany of horrors, the chair scraping violently along the floor as she pushed from the table.

"It is the truth, and no less than you deserve."

 _Now_ he was feeling honest. Lavellan resisted the urge to point out his impeccable timing.

"If all this is true then help me escape her, Solas! All I want is to return to the Dalish and my resistance, I just need them to know I'm alive." The scratch crept higher in her throat, and though she cleared it, a hand over her mouth, it remained.

He leaned back in his chair, brow set in a pensive line. His fingertips tapped her little book absently as he weighed the options.

She lowered her voice, but refused to return to her seat. "You said she would claim me again, what does that mean?"

"It means that when you wake, you will once more be a wolf."

Her heart sank. The idea of shifting back into that creature, limping along on three sore paws, unable to speak...

"Can you not stop her? I want so little, but I need to die as one of my people."

He shook his head, and his gaze fell to the small book of folktales in his hand. "You remember I spoke of the orbs focusing the magic of various members of the pantheon?"

"Yes, of course."

"Our strengths and weaknesses lie in different areas. Occasionally they overlap, but it is rare. For instance, it is impossible for her to find us here because I am able to bar her from vast areas of the Fade, but in turn, I have little ability to shift the blood and bones of others. I am... unable to reverse her spell. It goes far beyond typical shape shifting, which is why you find yourself dreaming as a wolf does."

Lavellan abandoned the chair entirely and stepped to the nearest bookshelf, still glittering with silver and white. She freed one of thick thick tomes from beside its kin and propped the book open awkwardly along the edge of the shelf. The book fell open to a page of spidery, yet familiar elvhen handwriting. "Why her? Out of all potential allies?"

"Because Falon'Din is worse. Because she lacks the focus to defeat me. Because if I did not, another would. It was a calculated risk."

At that a great swell of anger rose in her and she snapped the book shut - an effort made rather anticlimactic with a single hand - and stuffed the book back into its spot on the shelf. Upside down. With a second surge of rage she pulled it out and turned it over before thrusting it unceremoniously back in place.

"We would've helped you fight him!"

"It is my fight, and one that should've been fought long ago, in my world."

Her head turned sharply and the look she cast over her shoulder was equal parts hurt and fury.

"I wish you'd stop referring to it as my world and yours! Your history is mine as well, and my world is the legacy you created."

"It is more complicated than you know."

Lavellan pressed her palm against an eye and resisted the urge to groan. "Solas, for so long I believed we moved through the world on an equal footing, at least in some ways, but when you phrase things like that you out your true feelings. I might know if you explained!"

"You might know intellectually, but _feeling_ is different." Now came the scrape of his own chair against the floor.

"Help me rise above the doomed little mortal you take me for then." She turned back to the bookshelf and leaned her forehead against the books, breathing in the scent of leather and dust and old paper. When she spoke again it was to the books, resigned. "It goes both ways - you can help me be more, and I can help you be less. You don't have to be Fen'Harel."

She heard the sound of footsteps approaching, but they stopped a short distance away and came no further.

"Let us help you with Falon'Din," she said quietly. "We're not as toothless as you think."

"You know why I cannot."

"Because you mistakenly don't think us strong enough," she said, lifting her head from the books. "Because you know something you won't tell me. Because I'll be dead soon."

Behind her there was silence.

Just then, something he'd mentioned fell neatly into place in her mind, and she turned to fully face him.

" _'Blood and bones.'_ If Ghilan'nain can mold bodies to her whim, could she not stop the anchor from killing me? Could she not halt whatever poison is left from the anchor?"

His head was shaking before she'd finished speaking. "In theory, yes, though I would strongly suggest that you ask no boon of her."

"Why would that be? Because deals with her come at a steep cost?"

"My pact and any you ask of her would be entirely different. The context is not the same. She does not view you as worthy."

"Do you realize what you're telling me? What the implication of that is?"

"That it is preferable to die rather than make a pact with her," he said, his features settling into something blank and unreadable.

The silence between them returned, but only momentarily.

"I know you still have a heart, you didn't lie by omission about _that_."

Again he said nothing, but his fingers tightened around the little book he still carried.

Unable to meet his gaze, she looked back to the shelf and ran her fingertips along the nearest row of books. They shimmered, and like before their covers shifted, this time into an earthy green. The silver horn details dripped, liquid, from the spines, running over the edge of the shelf and vanishing as they touched the floor, and in their place the ash black bones of a wolf appeared.

When she stood back, the green books had taken over almost a full row of the ceiling high shelf. They were thick books, to be sure, but a drop in the ocean compared to the white tomes immediately adjacent.

"Book three and four have some risque parts, and seven has a great battle scene, but skip everything past book eight, that's when the genre shifts from adventure to tragedy." Lavellan turned to leave, eyes downcast, stepping toward a broad stone staircase on the far side of the room.

"Wait."

Solas lifted a hand towards her. "Before you leave. She may have imprisoned you as a trophy, but she has little power within the Fade. For as long as you are asleep you will remain free, and as one of the people. I will make sure of it."


	9. Of The Same Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Falon'Din and Dirthamen weigh their options, Cullen bumps his head, Solas writes a shitty note.

"Look at this. Have you ever seen a bigger heap of garbage in all your life?"

Falon'Din squinted against the harsh, unfiltered light of the desert, a hand raised to shield his eyes as he scanned the horizon from his rocky overlook. He sat in the dust, one leg hanging lazily above a drop that would kill a mortal several dozen times over. From far below, snaking along the bottom of the gorge, acrid fumes and the smell of boiling tar rose up to assault his senses.

Dirthamen ran a hand along the bottom of his jaw, noting the sound of days old stubble rasping against his fingertips. When he spoke, it was in his deep, dry voice, forever unimpressed, eternally unsurprised.

"There is an austere beauty to it."

Falon'Din turned his head only far enough to make sure his brother could tell how preposterous the notion was. "You only say that because your temple isn't a smoking canyon right now."

The two men peered out across the expanse of blasted land, where not a stone or shard of glass remained of a once glittering temple, arguably the grandest of them all.

"All those jewels, gone. Those spells. That statue by that girl with the blue eyes. All those clever little trials for the slaves."

" _Clever_ is not a word I would choose myself." Dirthamen said.

"Why not? Andruil and I designed them together."

"You _do_ know that the supplicants started coming in through the side window after a time? That no one used the front entrance?"

Still seated in the dust, Falon'Din leaned back on his bare elbows and lifted his chin skyward, tipping his head far enough back to meet Dirthamen's gaze, albeit upside down. "...truly?"

"Yes."

The owl made a thoughtful sound in his throat. "No matter, we'll build better ones in the new temple. I'll put my hands around Fen'Harel's throat and squeeze until the blood vessels in his eyes burst. Then you can design me new trials."

Dirthamen crossed his arms across his chest and made a low, vague noise. "Speaking of the wolf, Ghilan'nain and Fen'Harel have formed a truce. They mean to rid themselves of you before settling their own feud."

Falon'Din climbed to his feet and dusted the sand from his calloused hands. His cloak, crafted from hundreds of pieces of cloth of gold ruffled in the poisonous wind, giving the appearance of feathers, while the dust that collected in the weave of his leg wraps went unnoticed.

"I've heard. Can you imagine what their camp must be like? All half-formed bear abominations and wayward spirits, a bunch of furious little mortals running around eating everything in sight, dying at the slightest provocation. I bet they hang on that pedant's every word. I wish Elgar'nan was here to see it."

Dirthamen's mouth twitched at the corner, and he folded his hands behind his back. "I imagine you have plans?"

The thick, neat brows of the former god of death lifted as he leaned forward to pry a pebble from his footwrap. "After a fashion. Fen'Harel has the eluvians, so he'll almost certainly outrun me if I try to flee - which I won't - but I heard his orb is gone. What's he going to do, muddle his way through the battle with June's magic?"

"And Andruil's."

Falon'Din clucked his tongue. "Still. If they want me, they can come get me, and they can fight through the waves of furious humans to do it. He kicked that wasp's nest all on his own, he can bear the stings."

"I assume I know the answer, but where is Sylaise?"

"Where indeed!" Pebble successfully dislodged, Falon'Din straightened and pulled back the collar of his shirt, exposing a shoulder, revealing a deep groove of broken skin and muscle that mirrored the winding gorge beside them. The bone worked ghoulishly beneath, though the wound itself was a bloodless, pale thing.

"You needn't have done that, she was clever. _Actually_ clever," Dirthamen said, and a brief flaring of his nostrils betrayed his feelings on the matter.

"Not truly, or her orb wouldn't be sitting back at camp. Will you join me?"

"No."

"And you refuse to because...?"

"Because my orb is my own and I have no wish to." Dirthamen turned to look over his shoulder, where below them in the low, sandy valley Falon'Din's people camped in meticulous rows, waiting.

"Our orbs are two fragments of the same heart, they belong together. They're _strongest_ together."

Dirthamen shook his head and turned back to his twin. "We woke to a world unlike anything before it, and I plan on seeing it before Fen'Harel destroys it through self-flagellation. I will not join you."

Falon'Din stooped again, this time to pick up a stone before righting himself and leveling it at his brother's head. A well timed sidestep ensured that the rock missed Dirthamen and sailed over the precipice to a silent death in the molten river below.  
  
"Will I see you again?" Falon'Din's brow furrowed into a long, deep line.

"No, I suppose not."

"Then I'm sorry I missed, brother."

*****

The sight of Commander Cullen in a cramped elven aravel, hunched over a dog-eared map, head brushing the ceiling was one that never ceased to bring Harding joy. It wasn't that funny, all things considered, but in a world besieged by ancient elven gods, restless national armies and furious packs of vigilante civilians bent on elven annihilation, she would take what she could get.

"Commander?" Harding tapped her gloved knuckles against the entrance of the aravel that served as the new war room.

The resistance formed from the ashes of the Inquisition was smaller, quieter, lighter on its feet, though still led by many of the same faces. The last year had seen many old allies fall away while new ones took their place, and among the most steadfast, spurred to action by the return of the Dread Wolf, was Clan Ghilain.

With no Skyhold to their name, the nomadic Resistance (which knew no formal name, and had simply settled into the permanent use of the word as title) was a natural fit with the descendants of Inquisitor Ameridan, and where their aravels went, through thick wood or over barren rock, so too had Lavellan and her people.

Most members of the Resistance had settled into the Dalish way of life with relative ease, and the two parties had forged a strong bond based on mutual understanding. If they failed to work together the Evanuris would burn everything to cinders - elf, dwarf, qunari or human, it made little difference.

When not trading information with Dorian and Maevaris in Tevinter, Resistance scouts slept in aravels, in modest tents or simply under the open sky. They joined Dalish hunters as they tracked Falon'Din through southern Thedas, took their meals together and, especially of late, died together. It had not been a good month.

Commander Cullen glanced up from his map, the furrow of his sunburned brow betraying his irritation. Beside him, Charter, Keeper Miris and one of her hunters looked on.

"We've just received a raven," Harding said as she ducked into the cozy space, pushing through a curtain of wooden beads to pass along the missive. "You'll never guess who it's from."

Charter took the proferred parchment and handed it off to Cullen.

"This is... Is this Solas' writing?" Cullen looked up, his gaze searching for confirmation from those in the land ship. He turned the note over, the paper crinkling under the scrutiny.

"Yes sir," said Harding, withdrawing her head from the now tangled beads. "I checked it against one of his old requisition lists. The capitol I is a perfect match."

"Maker's breath - the Inquisitor's alive? I thought for sure..." In his haste to stand Cullen rose and, not for the first time, cracked the back of his skull against the colourfully painted ceiling of the aravel. His hand went to his head, but it was a gesture done of habit more than anything else. His focus was decidedly elsewhere.

Charter's nimble fingers slipped the paper from his hand and she scanned the writing. Then, in response to the Keeper's expectant look, she cleared her throat and read.

"The Inquisitor yet lives, a prisoner under the banner of another. You would be wise to assign a new leader and focus efforts elsewhere.

I will see her freed if I can - do not rely upon it."

 

 


	10. Sleep Well, and Often

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan returns to the library and Ghilan'nain has an unfortunate epiphany.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fingers crossed this one's not too off my game, having a bumpy week! Thanks so much for reading. :)

Much to Lavellan's distress, Solas was right - she was indeed still a wolf upon waking.

Still thick with sleep from the trance he'd invoked to enter the Fade, she rose from the ground onto three paws and found Solas standing a short distance away, speaking quickly with what was unmistakably one of Ghilan'nain's people.

Unmistakable due to the stark white helm the woman wore, complete with ornate, twisting halla horns, and as she spoke she raised her chin just a little too high, held her posture too rigid, eyes darting anywhere but on Solas, and by doing so betrayed her fear for all the world to see.

Lavellan could hardly blame the sentinel after what had transpired an hour before. The sight of the Dread Wolf rumbling his displeasure, ears pressed back, radiating cold and a palpable sense of unease - it wasn't one she wished to see again any time soon. Reconciling the scene with the man she knew - a man with a penchant for Nevarran lemon candies, who delighted in the feel of new paintbrushes and the taste of peppery red wines - was an impossible task.

Solas turned from the woman and his hard gaze lit upon Lavellan, who did her best to focus, blurry as she was at the edges.

"Ghilan'nain insists you join her," he said, translating for her benefit. "She also insists no harm will come to you while our pact holds."

He didn't need to voice his skepticism for her to know it was there.

As there was little Solas could do to help her in her current state, it was a choice weighted heavily towards the undesirable. The notion of marching towards war with a goddess void of all empathy wasn't high on Lavellan's list of priorities, but returning to her proper form was, and there was only one entity capable of the task.

She limped forward to join Ghilan'nain's sentinel, whose relief was plain to see, and as the two moved to leave Solas addressed the former Inquisitor in the common tongue, ensuring some measure of privacy.

"Your people know you to be alive. Sleep well, and often."

*****

Ghilan'nain's eyes were uncommonly bright as she knelt to inspect Lavellan, freshly returned to her ridiculous red tent. They shone with a renewed interest, keen, appraising, and when she spoke, the gentle, musical tones of her voice felt deeply unsettling in light of recent revelations. Lavellan found herself leaning back, away from the soft hands and soothing strokes of the Mother of Halla, and when she swallowed it was like a cold stone in her throat.

The goddess purred in her nearly forgotten tongue, seemingly unconcerned with her guest's lack of comprehension, but as Lavellan watched, Ghilan'nain's eyes narrowed and her delicate fingers found a place under her jaw and lifted her snout roughly, nails embedding themselves into the fur there. She hissed a cascade of words, and among them the name 'Fen'Harel'. Lavellan resisted the almost overwhelming urge to growl as she was forced to meet her host's gaze, and instead, peered back in stony silence.

After a long, searching, pause Ghilan'nain smiled, but if she intended the look to reach her eyes she was woefully unsuccessful. Her slim fingers released Lavellan's jaw and moved instead to inspect what remained of her leg.

Ghilan'nain made a thoughtful sound, almost curious, and at that moment there was no sound more chilling to Lavellan. She pulled back, twisted in place in an attempt to free herself, but the grip on her leg only intensified.

Again Ghilan'nain spat Solas' former name when she spoke, and as she did her eyes flashed a cold, familiar blue. Immediately the remnants of the anchor reacted to the magic. It flared in her chest and Lavellan reeled as a blinding pain coursed its way from nose to tail. From somewhere outside herself she could hear the yowls of some wretched creature, and she could taste a metallic tang as she coughed and coughed and wouldn't stop.

And then, as quickly as the pain had begun, it was over.

Ghilan'nain made a pleased note and released her grip. Easing back into her warm, soothing persona, she scratched the spot between Lavellan's pointed ears, then stood and dusted her hands together. Without another word, she turned and stepped from the tent to see to her camp's travel preparations.

*****

That evening, Lavellan avoided all contact with the Halla and her people as best she could, and though a servant came by to offer her a late supper (some fashion of stew poured over a spiced bread) she withdrew to the farthest corner of the tent and was grateful that the camp was too busy with packing to notice.

Sleep came late to Lavellan in the red tent, but come it did. True to his word, Lavellan was pulled from a wolf's dream of devouring a freshly caught hare, its rib bones cracking pleasingly in her jaws, into the clear, vivid dreams of the Dread Wolf. When she stumbled forward through the Fade from paws to elven feet it was to find herself once again in the library.

"I cannot stay, but I hope you will be comfortable here," Solas said, stepping away as soon as he'd released her hand. "If it is not to your tastes, you may change it to something more suitable."

Which wasn't entirely true. Since the removal of the anchor a year before her ability to walk to and fro in the world of the Fade had been greatly diminished. Indeed, most nights it seemed to be sheer luck if she dreamed of anything restful. Too often she fell prey to her own troubled mind, and it was a mind that felt no compunction when it came to concocting the nightmarish or lingering on memories best forgotten.

She'd scarcely opened her mouth to reply, to ask again about Ghilan'nain's effect on the anchor, when he'd taken another purposeful step and vanished. Whether to the waking world or further into the Fade it was impossible to say, but the library was still, the only movement the flickering of flame in the nearby wall sconces. Her hopeful heart beat once, twice in fury, then settled back into its dutiful sorrow, and it was like slipping into well worn boots, perfectly molded to her body.

"Ma serannas, vhenan," she uttered to an empty room.

Lavellan turned in place. Gone was the sea of white and silver spines, and in their place stood a varied collection of books. With some interest she noted that volumes one through eleven of her story of the Dread Wolf were as she'd left them, neatly lining the nearest shelf.

"What does that _mean_!" she said aloud, vexed by their very presence. Should she feel flattered he'd kept them on the shelf, or had he simply forgotten them in his haste to rewrite Thedas as a pile of smoldering ash?

The reading room was far from the only space to available to her. Like her earliest memories of the library the place contained a seemingly infinite array of rooms and stairs and dimly lit, pillowed nooks, perfect for lounging. There were narrow halls and quiet, bubbling fountains set into walls. There were dead ends, stopping at the base of immense leaded glass windows, and balconies that looked down onto still more rooms, all restful, all silent, the patrons dead or sleeping or having fled to the far corners of the Fade.

Unlike her memories, this version of the library was no ruin. No books were out of place, no masonry had come apart, and all paths were sturdy and in no danger of dropping suddenly into the abyss. (Or so she hoped.)

It was all wonderful, warm and inviting, but none of it helped her reach the Resistance, and none of it brought her any closer to transforming into her true form. Her sigh was on of impotent frustration. She might be the most useless person in all of Thedas at the moment, but it was not a crown she would wear easily. There had to be something at hand to help, something that could help her escape her new body, her former gods, her chainless prison.

Lavellan stepped to a nearby shelf and, at random, tipped a book forward.

Bold, feminine writing flowed across the open page, and when she flipped through it she found the same hand turned to illustration. Skilled ink renderings of unfamiliar mushrooms, some larger than an aravel, all grown into elaborate fungal topiaries. Mushrooms that looks like birds, amorous couples, dragons, butterflies - even one grown into an immense, anatomically perfect cock.

"Sure, why wouldn't you."

Back on the shelf it went, and the next book she reached for was a deep blue, with beautifully marbled end papers that undulated like gentle waves. Unlike the previous book, this was a book written in emotion, indistinguishable from memory. As the book fell open she was filled with bright, searing jealousy, a white rage that pulsed inside her, sickened her, nettled her into finding the man in question and -

The book was hastily pushed back into place, but the sudden swell of emotion had taken its toll on her already distressed frame. She was seized by another coughing fit, so violent and uncontrollable that she bent double and clutched the shelf for support, and when she took her hand from her mouth it was to find her palm speckled with blood. She wiped her hands together, willing the Fade to erase the evidence, but it remained, a stubborn reminder of the life (and death) that waited for her in the waking world.

When she regained her faculties and straightened, the ache in her lungs having receded, she found herself face to face with the drifting, ethereal features of a spirit, coral in colour and soothing in disposition.

"If I disturbed you, I apologize," Lavellan said, pushing her shoulders back, the light mail of her Dalish armour shifting with her. "I hadn't meant to be that loud."

"You seem to be searching for something," came the reply, in a voice like spring rain on fallen leaves.

"I am. Are you an archivist? Or a wisdom spirit? Do you know of any books on Fen'Harel or Ghilan'nain? Would you take me to them?" It was too many questions all at once, but she needed answers.

The spirit inclined what was presumably her head. "We are study. What subject do you wish to see?"

Lavellan paused, biting her bottom lip as she considered. "...What subjects are there?"

"There are many. At random, the library contains the collections of all known paintings by the artist Fen'Harel, one thousand and thirty seven accounts from the Battles of Arbor Oaks and Shifting Glass, several thousand pre-Veil works of poetry (by and about the Dread Wolf), all collected Dalish interpretation, sorted by author, clan, date, collected political cartoons and satirical writings, three thousand and fourteen completed songs, A Genealogy Of Our Beloved Creators, A Pilgrim's Guide to Completion of The Trials of Ghilan'nain, The Dragon's Teeth, later renamed 'The Companion Poems' by Mythal. Speculative or unwritten books are also available."

"Books... that were never put to paper? Only conceived of?"

"That is correct."

"Have I written any books in this library?"

"You have."

"What about?"

"At random, The Life of Inquisitor Ameridan, a compilation of love letters to three and a half different lovers, The Complete Events of the Second Inquisition, Pleas to the Dalish, An Account of Time Travel in the Year 9:41 Dragon, and You Can Cook Dalish Cuisine!"

It was too much to take in. She waved a hand, urging the spirit to stop.

"Please, that's enough. We'll start somewhere direct. I'd be interested in knowing how to speak Elvhen. ...pre-Veil Elvhen, the version spoken in Arlathan. Can you help?"

The spirit's voice lifted in what sounded suspiciously like a smile. "We can."

  
*****

Lavellan was curled amongst the stacks of books and pillows, brow furrowed in concentration as her mouth silently moved through the letterforms.

"That one's the same. Interesting," she said to the silent room, turning the page to the next lesson.

Many of the characters were identical to modern Elvhen, but others were completely foreign, forming shapes and sounds she'd never even considered. Some sounds rolled off the tongue, while others caught in the back of her mouth and simply wouldn't come. Learning a language from a book was far from ideal, but as the archivist spirit had vanished in the same manner as it had arrived, and all the ancient Elvhen she knew were a) haughty b) murderous or c) unwilling, the book would have to do.

With her collection of books picked out she'd found a small, sunken nook just under an elaborate leaded glass window of Mythal, the dragon's wings spread wide and welcoming, if such a thing could be said of a dragon. Before stepping onto the pillows, she'd shed her Dalish armour, freeing herself from the mail and metal, tugging her boots off, dropping her dagger just inside. Arms and feet bare, dressed in a thin green tunic and simple leggings she made her way to the centre of the sunken nook and had settled herself against the feather pillows.

Then, for a time, Lavellan lost herself to reading.

When she'd exhausted her focus on language she shifted to first hand accounts of famous elven battles, folk tales, folios of illustration work of the Dread Wolf's rebellion. The spirit of study had directed her towards a book of love poems dedicated to the Fen'Harel, penned by followers in the final years of Arlathan, but she'd drowned it under as many tasseled pillows as she could find and turned her focus to books with a more immediate purpose. Books that wouldn't work her stomach into cold, irrational knots.

Even without looking at the love poems the research on Fen'Harel felt strange and unwelcome. Perusing such intimate information felt like an invasion of Solas' closely held privacy, but the thought was quickly dismissed with a dry, incredulous laugh. He'd given up all rights to privacy when he took the first step on his ghoulish path, and if this strange, magical dream library could offer her insight into saving her people, she would be a fool not the take it.

She was sitting cross legged, bent forward with her elbows on her knees when she was struck by the sensation of being watched. That the library suddenly had one more patron. She looked up from her book and peered into the dim room, beyond tables stacked high with tomes and shelves bowing under the weight of their treasures, but the room remained as still as ever.

"Wisdom?"

Lavellan waited, but the spirit made no appearance.

With a huff, she rolled onto her side, away from the feeling, but it persisted, a prickle on the back of her neck, a warmth along her bare skin. She managed to ignore the suspicion for two more pages before her focus began to crack, and once again she lowered her book and glanced over her shoulder.

"...Solas?" She licked her lips and scanned the nearby shelves.

"If you wish, there are faster ways to learn a language," came his quiet reply.

 


	11. Tell The Dalish

"Why would you offer to help me? You've made your position very clear, Solas."

She wielded his name out of both fondness and fear, a small prayer for him to remember the humble, humane parts of himself. Not the legend or the general, but the man who'd once choked during dinner over one of Dorian's more colourful anecdotes and needed to be slapped soundly on the back until he could catch his breath.

"It was my intention to leave you and your people in a place of relative peace. Clearly, that did not happen -"

Lavellan's dry note of agreement gave him a moment's pause.

" - but if it is within my power to pry you from Ghilan'nain's grasp, to give you a measure of freedom once more, then I would be remiss not to try."

Owing to the mounds of feather pillows in the reading nook, when she stood it was a graceless affair, her bare feet searching for purchase among the silks and satins, a hand reaching for support and finding only air. After an awkward moment she managed to right herself, finding a stable base on a large, flat pillow and pushed her shoulders back in an effort to reclaim some measure of dignity.

In her thin summer tunic and bare feet, her arm uncovered, she was exposed and unprepared for the sudden appearance of the former god of misfortune, who, in contrast, was dressed in immaculate plate and mail, a motif of delicate rabbit bones etched into the polished surface. The effect was unsettling, to say the least, and no doubt a purposeful decision on his part.

"How long have you been here?"

"Not long. An hour. Perhaps two," he said.

_Not long._

In one fluid motion (a sharp contrast to her unwieldy greeting) Lavellan scooped a round pillow from the pile and hurled it in his direction. "Two hours?" It bounced harmlessly off his immaculate armour and tumbled back to join its brethren in the pillow pit.

He blinked, but remained as still as his moldering statues.

"And here I felt guilty reading your early poetry! Why didn't you say something?" She bent again, this time to pluck the book of Elvhen writing from her stack of reading material. It had a solid heft to it, and would make an excellent projectile. It might even make him visibly react if she put enough weight behind the throw.

Instead her fingers tightened around the spine. Her shoulders slumped, and her chest rose and fell in one, silent sigh. As welcoming a visual as it conjured, and as satisfying as it would be to vent her bottomless rage through physical violence (and it would be profoundly satisfying), she'd never been the 'hurl everything from the tent during an argument' type, and it was much too late to start now.

"Why do you never say anything?" She finished weakly.

Solas stepped down, taking the three steps with care, his heavy metal armour eerily silent. At the edge of the pillows he paused, gaze intent. In his hand, he too clutched a book, and she was grateful to see it wasn't the appallingly chipper sounding Dalish cookbook, but one of the mossy green tomes of the Dread Wolf.

Which, after a moment's consideration, was not much better.

"Why do you have that?" She said with some caution.

"You conjured them for my benefit - I assumed the invitation still stood."

She pinched the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes, a heat rising in her cheeks, and only the smallest sliver of it was due to embarrassment. "Those... Yes. I created them in anger. I hadn't truly expected you to look at them."

He considered the book in his hand and tapped it gently against his other palm. "They're beautifully penned, vhenan."

Lavellan looked up sharply at the term of endearment.

Though a wolf, she'd noted its absence during her brief time in his camp and felt both an ache for its loss and a bitter sort of gratitude - it would make it that much easier to dispatch an unfeeling man cultivating a distinctly Corypheus-like air. 

"...which volume is that?"

In reply, Solas lifted the book and opened it to the first page. The Fade, as if acknowledging the gesture, shimmered and shifted and the library vanished from sight, to be replaced by the warm, lush woodland of the Free Marches.

Just above them, birds sang to one another in pips and trills.

"Oh," she breathed, and she knew precisely what was to come.

Bathed in the dappled light that filtered through the canopy were scores of aravels in various states of disrepair, their sails bright red and orange (even one particularly confrontational shade of purple) among the green on green of the forest. Hobbled halla stood among them, grazing or dozing as the cicadas buzzed in the still summer heat. Beneath her own bare feet the pillows had become soft moss, cool and feathery against her skin.

The residents of the aravels hadn't gone far. A short distance away in a large, verdant glade stood hundreds of her people, shifting their weight, glancing about, or staring straight ahead with grim determination. It was a sea of tattooed faces, some fresh, some blurred and ancient, all expectant.

It was every clan who'd answered the call of the Inquisitor in her darkest hour.

From all across Thedas, some traveling weeks through unfamiliar terrain, the Dalish has trickled into the forest, setting up a temporary city of creaking wheels and bowstrings and boastful hunting tales that carried on the breeze from one fire to the next.

Solas and Lavellan watched the scene unfold before them as another Lavellan, a past Lavellan, her arm newly bandaged, stepped upwards onto an immense fallen log and regarded her people in silence. The former Inquisitor in the glade was unreadable. She wore Dalish mail, shedding the human style armour that Skyhold had lovingly thrust upon her, and the murmuring slowly died away, voice by voice, until only the grunts of the halla and the buzz of the insects remained.

"We can't watch this," said the Lavellan of the library, reaching for Solas' arm, urging him away from the scene. Her hand found the cold metal of his plate, but at the sight of a hundred empty rabbit skulls staring back at her she hastily removed her hand. He met her eyes, but only briefly.  Behind her, the scene played on, and Solas looked towards it with a pained sort of interest, the kind of expression she'd seen the normally stoic Cassandra wear as Skyhold's surgeon saw to a patient with gangrene.

She heard herself speaking - shouting, really - and the words she spoke were the truth as she knew it. As she still believe it to be. The truth of the Inquisition, the eluvians, the orb, and finally of the Dread Wolf, her voice firm and edged with fury as she told her tale to her family.

Beside her, Solas was still.

The Dalish, for their part, responded to her revelation with a wall of silence.

A halla snorted. The Lavellan of the past said nothing, and from her memories of the moment the woman of the present could almost feel the fire of her freshly severed arm, hidden neatly from view, her own quiet agony.

Then a shout from the back. "He tricked you!"

The Inquisitor turned her head, looking for the source. (It was not wrong.)

And then the floodgates had opened.

There were shouts for her to continue, pleading for advice, for a course of action, but above them all in voices that grew more hoarse and furious with each moment rose a chorus of those uttering the same word.

Liar.

From the log, Lavellan tried to lift her voice above them all, to regain some measure of civility, but it was in vain. Their anger, fear and disappointment were an entity unto themselves, a demon of her own creation, and one far beyond her control.

On the forest floor the shouting towards her soon devolved into shouting at one another, and within moments the unity of the Dalish front had fractured. Keepers hollered at keepers, hunters reached for their bows, a fist met a jaw, while others quietly retreated into the woods.

An arrow (stray or true, she could never know ) embedded itself into the wood of the log the Inquisitor stood upon, entirely too close to her foot.

The peaceful scene had become chaos.

Lavellan may not have had the control over her dreams that the anchor had once afforded her, but her rage upon watching the scene focused her anger into a keen edge, and when she clenched her fist and snarled her fury - a wordless, cold thing - the world lurched again, shimmering, wrenching them away from the forest and the fateful moment where she'd shattered what little remained of her own people.

The calm of the library returned.

So too did the silence.

With the voices of the Dalish still ringing in her ears, Lavellan took a long, unsteady breath.

"I am sorry," Solas said, gaze downcast. "I assumed that your elevated position among your people would shield you from their disbelief, if not their rage."

"A mistake we both made," she said after a moment, and reached to reclaim the tome from his hands with more force than she'd originally intended. "...But you knew that, didn't you? You had spies in attendance, ones who told you we'd fallen to infighting."

He nodded, however reluctantly.

She exhaled, running a hand across her face. "Surely there must be a word for that in Elvhen, the feeling when you doom your own people through the best of intentions and it all spirals sickeningly out of control."

His dry, bitter laugh died almost as soon as it'd begun.

She turned from him then, moving for the shallow stone steps, but his gloved hand caught her bare wrist.

"The spell, vhenan, wait. You must understand us."


	12. Leaving the Pantry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan has a language lesson.

Before Lavellan had time to ask about the nature of the spell (the last of his magic had not been terribly kind to her) she was drawn in, held in place, his grip firm against her upper arms - and kissed. 

Had she a say in the matter she might've politely declined, pulled away as if burnt or asked him how audacious he was feeling on a scale of one to ten, but she had none - his mouth saw to that - and so she made a note of surprise and reached for his arm in return in an effort to remain standing.

It wasn't quite a kiss - not truly. There was a reluctance and a formality to it that caused it to fall just short. Over the course of her short life she'd been kissed badly, roughly, warmly, softly and with far too much tongue (particularly in her early days). She'd even been kissed by a presumptuous young human deep in his cups, and came away from the experience feeling he'd left a rather poor romantic impression of his people. Even so, none of the preceding kisses had been accompanied by a pleasant tingling that spread across her tongue. None of them had brought with them the sense of magic flowing into her, expanding the limits of her consciousness. She could feel the familiar warmth of the elven language as he offered it - all of it - from the earliest days to the latest inception of it, and it was nothing short of a revelation.

The Dalish spoke it, to be sure, but only a small, humble corner of it, childlike and coarse in its simplicity. It was as though the language of the elves were a vast mansion, a palace of glittering tiles and reflecting pools, luxurious scented bed linens and sprawling gardens and her people had never bothered to leave the pantry.

And not only elven.

Just out of reach, at the fringes of his spell she could sense the languages held back, their sounds and syntax waiting in the wings. Tevene, Orlesian (both rural and courtly) much of Qunlat. There were others, unfamiliar to her, dusty and half forgotten or else animal and magical, completely impenetrable to her. There were the hisses, guttural groans and sharp staccato yowls of demons, their entire language centered around fury, fear and frustration.

And there was something else. Something unknowable, corrupted and terrible beneath all other languages, oozing thickly, a putrid mess of violent intent.

She managed to push back, not out of his grasp but enough to break the spell, and instead of a justified flurry of insults or a dry admonishment the next words from her mouth took the form of breathless curiosity. "You understand the blight? It... speaks?"

"Nothing so eloquent as speech."

She stood in place, breath ragged, eyes darting as she took in the nearness of his features. Lavellan marveled at the familiar taste of him, unchanged since he'd reclaimed the anchor a year before. If she didn't cast her gaze downwards at his armour, if she looked him straight in the eye and ignored all else it might've been any normal night at Skyhold, dropping in to visit him in his modest room.

As the magic of the broken spell began to ebb away, taking with it the pleasant warmth across her tongue, she found herself stepping once more into the present. His eyes watched hers, searching, his grip still firm upon her upper arms.

She took a steadying breath.

"That... That's the form the spell takes? Is there no other way?"

"It is." Though there was neither spirit nor elf in the cavernous reading room, his voice was pitched for only her. "For our purposes it is regrettable that it takes the form that it does, but with the time available to us there is no other recourse."

She licked her lips and turned her head, peering beyond his shoulder at the towering bookshelves. Meeting his eyes seemed a shade reckless.

"The spell is only partly complete. If you'll permit -"

"You might have asked."

His gloved hands stayed where they were, insistent, too strong against her skin. "You would decline."

Lavellan's brows drew together, knitting in the centre. "While we're deciding the thoughts of others, my refusal would've meant something to you, once."

"It still does, though there are mitigating factors, and time is of the ess-"

"But you had hours to watch me read."

His sigh carried both acceptance and frustration in equal measure, but before he could reply she continued, firmly, with as much kindness as she could manage given the circumstances.

"You know so much, Solas, but you could blink and my entire life would have run its course. Don't speak to me of limited time." And then, while she had his ear. "When you go unquestioned, when you make decisions for others, even for common good, you risk becoming one of them."

The unflattering comparison earned her a dark look, though it was hastily pushed away, his self-awareness honed too sharply to allow the expression to linger. "I am aware," he said, and his grip became less constricting. "Even so, we are in a unique situation, and I still believe the spell to be the wisest course of a-"

She leaned forward then, fingertips balancing her against the smooth metal of his armour and her mouth sought out his, interrupting his admission. He was, after all, right.

He stepped backward to catch himself, and scarcely a moment had passed before the pleasant feeling of his magic began anew, and where the gesture had been formal and guarded moments ago, it could most assuredly now be called a kiss.

With a small sound of impatience she shook his hand from her arm, and once free, she reached to smooth back the fur of his mantle, the grey and red of the wolf pelt impossibly soft beneath her skin. Just under it, the armour was cold, terrible and out of character. 

Over the course of the next minute she was again caught up in the depth of their shared language, and before she could dismiss it, felt a twinge of heat in her cheeks at all the times she'd said the wrong word, put the emphasis in a strange place, or used a drawn out explanation when a single word would do. What she would've given to know it all earlier, to learn from him in earnest, unhurried and with a sense of discovery to guide them.

"Say something," he breathed as he broke away, taking his mouth from hers. The bright blue of his eyes faded along with the spell.

"Where were you when Falon'Din took Halamshiral?" She said, not missing a beat. And though the question was in a familiar rhythm, her mouth formed words previously unknown, the sounds old and clipped on her tongue.  
  
"Again," he ordered, brooking no argument.

"Have you bothered to see what's left of Starkhaven?" It was the language of the guardians in Mythal's temple. Of the sentinels at his sanctuary who'd demanded (and not received) the proper greeting. Lavellan's words were the weathered marks on the mossy stones she'd once played on, and she wielded them with all the fury of a hidden knife.

"Push yourself! Again."

"You can feel the cracks in your plan, vhenan. You can see them if you shine any kind of light on it! You don't need me to tell you this!" She bristled as he again reached for her arm, wrenching it just out of his grasp.

"Again!" The shout echoed off the nearby masonry.

"I thought I should try to move on once. It turns out no one will touch you when you're the salted earth of the Dread Wolf!" Her voice was far too loud, out of place among the empty tables of the silent library. "Too cursed, no one dares risk making him angry. You don't even need to be in the same country, the same plane of existence, Solas! Your reputation betrays me all on its own! If you think you can toss me the bones of our forgotten language and call it even you're even more mad than they say you a-"

His kiss was hard and furious, fingers digging into the skin at the back of her neck, and a deep well of rage, long-suppressed, prompted her to bite down on whatever she could reach.

He grunted and pulled away, and when he did she could taste the metal of his blood. The victory, however, was a hollow one - she could inflict any manner of injury to him in the Fade and for good or ill, his waking body would remain completely unmarred.

Solas ran the back of his hand across his mouth before leaning to the side to spit, speckling the pillows with rust, but when he righted himself he was met with lips instead of teeth.

Lavellan wrapped her arm around his neck and pressed herself against the ridges and corners of his hateful armour, her breasts scarcely covered by the light summer cloth of her tunic, and the moan that came from her throat was far too eager for her liking.

He sunk to his knees then and dragged her with him, and she felt him pause only long enough to remove his gloves before weaving his fingers into the disheveled hair at the nape of her neck. She held onto his back with all the strength her weakened body had on reserve and when he returned her kiss there was no language or lesson to it, no magic, just the heat of his mouth and the same hunger she'd known in the quiet of their shared tent so many years before. 

"I love you," she prayed, kissing him through the blood, and she could hardly remember what she said next but could feel the age behind it, words left unsaid for more than a thousand years.

His hand was at her waist, then in the midst of pushing her thin tunic over her breasts. She kissed his neck, his jaw, whatever was within reach, but when she noticed the beautifully armoured feet at the corner of her vision she was inclined to ignore them as a trick of the Fade.

Instead, Abelas' voice was very clear as he informed Fen'Harel that the camp's preparations were complete and they were ready to depart.

The Dread Wolf was prompt in his response. He lifted her chin and forced her to meet his eyes, promising something unsaid, and though she dug her nails into the grooves between his armour it couldn't stop him from vanishing into the waking world.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Kiss as magic spell' trope, helllll. yesssss.


	13. Finally, Feet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The elves depart, and Lavellan does her best to keep her mind on the matter at hand.

Lavellan spent much of the morning pulling apart the events of the night before, scrutinizing them for clues, then admonishing herself for dwelling on a rather unfortunate (though shared) lapse in judgement. Even if she thought there was something she might be able to use, to aid in her escape or to determine just what the Dread Wolf was planning, it was madness to linger on it when her waking form was still under the thumb of an Evanuris with a penchant for casually reorganizing limbs.

Suppressing her recent dream was a task made somewhat easier by the departure of both war parties, ready and waiting at the first sign of the rising summer sun, and even at dawn it blazed across the meadow, baking away the morning dew.

It was going to be a long day.

Fen'Harel and his people took point, Ghilan'nain's party fell into position just behind, and the procession started south with no thought to breakfast and no word to her of their final destination.

Even with a party of hundreds, possibly thousands all told, the elves moved with surprising speed through the yellowing grass, leaving a wide trail of flattened wildflowers and churned up earth along the gentle slope of the meadow. The sentinels rode horses or walked on bare feet, staves in hand, while behind them came the infantry - the Dalish, the city elves, a smattering of ancient Elvhen in simple, practical armour. They carried their gear on their backs, occasionally stopping to trade bags, or else dragged their supplies behind them on short, haphazardly crafted sleds.

It was beyond vexing, being so out of the loop. As Inquisitor she'd been kept abreast of everything Leliana's spy network had shaken loose, and with Cullen and Josephine's daily reports she was in constant communication with even the most remote pockets of the world. In her current state, however, she was forced to limp behind the foot soldiers, keeping pace with the druffalo and other exasperated beasts of burden, just another weary mortal in a world that was fast becoming hostile to them.

She was addressed by no one, not even the nearby wagon drivers, who kept to themselves and spared her only the odd glance when she erupted in a painful, canine coughing fit. Their curiosity was short lived, and it wasn't long before they returned their focus to the path ahead.

In a way, she was grateful. There would be that much less attention on her if she needed to resort to a plan B and slip away, but it was a lonely road, surrounded by a people that should be hers and yet were not, as Solas had been so quick to remind her (and himself, she assumed). 

Unlike the days prior, her felted ears detected words where she'd once heard only snippets and sounds. Solas' spell, though tactlessly, wonderfully delivered, permitted an understanding of an ancient but familiar language, even if all she'd managed to make out thus far were hastily given orders and one sentinel's pining for a strong cup of coffee. Her ears twisted as she walked, straining to hear the mutterings and musings of those around her above the din of shuffling feet and occasional bouts of song.

As the morning dragged on and the sun rose in the sky, shortening the shadows, she could feel herself falling increasingly behind. Where once she'd kept pace with a wagon of determined looking city elves, the pads of her sore feet eventually got the better of her, forcing her to fall back beside the ale wagon, a slow, creaky thing pulled by an even creakier draft horse whose mouth was speckled with froth.

Lavellan found herself wondering if the creature had always been a horse, or an elf who was given a new, more practical purpose in life by Ghilan'nain's quick fingers.

Mid-morning they came to a river crossing in a low valley, though to call it a river was an act of supreme generosity. The water was shallow, sluggish, and the colour of strong tea. It smelled of frog eggs and rotting fish, which was no surprise - the weeks of unrelenting heat had caused the river to recede to dangerously low levels, and she past a handful of fly-swarmed fish carcasses while a pocket of doomed smelt swam for their lives in a pool on the verge of evaporation.

She could sympathize.

Hot and once more distracted by the previous night's conversation, Lavellan stepped into the mud by the water's edge and waited her turn to cross. She watched the wagons as they groaned their way across a makeshift bridge of pristine ice. Whichever mage had cast the spell had outed herself as something of an overachiever - the railings were not the usual low wall one might find on a crossing, but a series of rampant dragons, claws outstretched, tails forming elegant loops that refused to melt.

"Once Mythal's, always Mythal's," she said through a mouth of pointed teeth, though what came out was more akin to a low grumble.

As she watched the procession from her spot by the edge of the river the familiar ache in her chest crept its way into her consciousness. Before long, the nagging feeling had morphed into something that demanded to be acknowledged. It sat uncomfortably in her lungs, a rising nettle that no dry cough would shake away. She'd just stepped foot onto the cool of the bridge, preparing to cross, when a wave of pain - an echo of the anchor's most violent surges - coursed through her from nose to tail. She reeled, struggled to keep her feet, and only barely managed to escape being crushed by wagon wheels as she limped to the side of the bridge.

Once free of the threat of death by druffalo, she collapsed at the feet of an ice dragon, panting, willing the anchor's horrible magic to relent, shutting her eyes against the now all too familiar feeling of Solas' overwhelming magic. He was hardly a stone's throw away and could (or would) do nothing. 

"You are too slow like this. I hardly expected to find you here."

She opened her eyes and visible through a haze were the legs of an immense halla standing before her, and if she tipped her head back Lavellan could just make out the tips of Ghilan'nain's toes under the hem of a charcoal riding dress.

Gone were the gauzy, flowing fabrics, the romantic, loose hair falling in pale waves along her back. This Ghilan'nain wore her hair braided and knotted at the back of her neck, not a strand out of place. On her head she wore a crown of broken halla horns, the bones shattered and cracked as the horns spiraled upwards, and her eyes, previously languid and unconcerned, were hard and full of purpose.

When her voice had been unfamiliar syllables and soothing notes it had been pleasant to listen to, lyrical and light, but her lips now uttered words, and they were not ones that flooded Lavellan with confidence.

"I have no time for this. Come forth."

Lavellan's paws twitched, and though the anchor was still fighting against her, rolling through her body in needling waves, she shifted onto her side and, one leg at a time, steadied herself to rise. Her chest rose and fell, and the fur of her side was cool with the damp of the ice bridge as she peered upwards to the woman atop the graceful beast.

"You will be the death of me," said the woman, and reached out a hand - gloved, despite the heat - and twisted her wrist in a way she'd seen Solas do countless times while casting.

And in an instant, the world blurred. The pain of the anchor was replaced by a rush of nausea, and when it began to subside she found herself looking directly into the nostril of the regal halla.

Which was confusing, to say the least.

Lavellan swallowed, and when she did she nearly shouted in surprise. She stood before Ghilan'nain in an elven body - her elven body - clad in filthy Dalish armour, and it was only by wrapping her arm around the halla's neck that she managed to avoid toppling over.

The shock lasted all of a second, and was promptly replaced with a dull numbness in her limbs, not unlike the feeling of peeling off too-tight boots after a long day's walk. For the first time in days she breathed air into elven lungs, and when she removed her hand from the supportive halla to touch her own face, there was no snout, but a smooth, hairless nose.

"Ohhh," she muttered, turning her palm to inspect it. "I have fingers..."

"Hardly," said Ghilan'nain above her. "You will ride with me." The halla, sensing its rider's intentions, stepped forward, just beside Lavellan, and waited patiently, the picture of obedience.

The very notion of riding with Ghilan'nain was galling. If given the option between doing so and thrusting her remaining hand into a cooking fire, the latter would prove terribly tempting. As she had only the one path open to her, and walking long distances in her newly regained body would be unwieldy (at least until the numbness passed), Lavellan bit back her dismissal and set her hand on the halla's side. Stiffly, slowly she climbed onto the animal, settling into the open space just in front.

Ghilan'nain's gloved hands slipped around her waist, regaining their grip on a set of silver reins. 

Lavellan seated herself as far forward as she could, precariously close to a set of spectacular antlers, her every nerve on edge as the Mother of the Halla's breath caressed the back of her neck.

"Strange, that he waited so long to gift you our tongue. Still, whatever his motives, we have much to discuss, you and I."

And without another word the halla stepped forward, joining the flow of traffic as the last of the people crossed the bridge and filtered into the shade of the forest on the far side of the river.


	14. The Ruins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan goes for a much needed swim.

When the two camps stopped for the night it was in a place utterly unknown to Lavellan.

Three eluvians in varying states of neglect, flanked by stern, bare-faced sentinels had brought the elves through woods both familiar and foreign, and when they paused to make camp it was on a vast, overgrown lawn that lay before a moldering ruin.

Like Dirthamen's temple, his palace, too, was flooded, collapsed, partially reclaimed by the surrounding forest. Walls had toppled in places, ceilings had given way, and the unsettling number of ravens that roosted along the ornate masonry had left it spattered and white. Unlike his temple, there were signs that the building had once been habitable - even comfortable - but that time had long since passed.

The ancient elves in Ghilan'nain's coterie hunched their shoulders, shifted their weight and exchanged glances between one another, and the younger elves - Lavellan's people - noted the change in demeanor and from their uncertainty grew a second hand fear. Something unspoken about the ruin stirred memories best left forgotten, and from that unease grew a quiet caution. There seemed to be an invisible line drawn at the far end of the lawn, near the base of the ruin, over which no traveler dared step.

A handful of tents were pitched, fires started, and animals watered, but there was no sense of permanence to the encampment. Ghilan'nain had made it known they would stay only one night before continuing on. She had made known a number of other things besides, and Lavellan mulled over their earlier conversation and Ghilan'nain's strange, uncomfortable proposal as she paced the length of the camp, stretching her legs.

Across the lawn, if she squinted under the shade of her hand, Lavellan could make out a great black wolf speaking to a cluster of elves surrounding a bonfire. It wasn't the first time that day she'd seen Solas in his other skin. Throughout the afternoon she'd caught glimpses of the wolf far in the distance, unflagging, surging forward through the wood, but unlike her first sighting of the Dread Wolf, this incarnation seemed to lack the palpable sense of terror, and from where she stood at the border of Ghilan'nain's camp she could make out only two eyes, not six.

No one at the far bonfire appeared to be running in fright, turning to stone, or dying on the spot, and if he radiated a sense of cold doom his people were immune to the effects. Any sense of unease came not from his presence, but from the call of distant ravens, and indeed, it seemed to her that his people had taken time away from their rest to come pay their respects.

Ghilan'nain, on the other hand, had retreated into her tent with orders not to be bothered. Her approach to godhood was apparently more 'untouchable and distant' over 'champion of the people'. For all her cool indifference, perhaps she too was bothered by a distant memory of the place.

Lavellan, however, had no such memory to draw upon, and if she was feeling anything it was a sense of profound restlessness and irritation. As far as she was concerned the entire pantheon could dry up and die with no great loss to the world.

(Perhaps she would make one exception, if conditions were right.)

With the mages-turned-Creators otherwise engaged and the camps focused on a much needed repast, she was free to head to the far end of the lawn and slip into the shadows of the not-so-forgotten palace, away from the pointed looks and open stares and the corner of a mouth tugged upwards as its owner turned away.

She'd no plans to explore the ruin - only to find some measure of privacy while the camps were distracted - but from the shade of forest she could make out a number of elf-sized holes (and at least one gurgut sized) in the exterior walls, receding into a cool darkness that seemed tempting, almost welcoming, in the evening heat.

The mystery of the palace called to her. If Dirthamen had been as real a man as Cullen or Varric, what kind was he? How much of his reputation was accurate, and how much of it was the product of the distorted tales and untruths that plagued Solas so? If the remaining Creators were any indication, he was likely void of all empathy and any sense of good, but it couldn't hurt to look.

"Onward and upward," she said as she picked her way over the fallen stones towards the unintentional entrance. Going was slow with one hand and a body still aching with the echoes of unfamiliar magic, but she reached the top of the rubble heap and stepped inside.

As predicted, the interior was pleasantly cool, and though it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimly lit space, it was not so dark as she'd originally imagined. Light pooled from broken ceilings and filtered through bricks where the mortar had worn away. Muted, from somewhere above, she could hear the calls of the ravens through the walls.

Unburdened for the moment by threats or obligations, Lavellan was free to explore where she pleased.

She moved through the abandoned rooms as if hunting, eyes watchful, pointed ears listening for even the slightest sound, but after a time it became clear that the place was well and truly empty. She searched through bedrooms and dressing rooms, where the furniture had rotted away to nothing, and ran her hand across walls that once bore elaborate frescoes, but water damage had destroyed all but the smallest patches, and the paint fell like snow where her fingers brushed the surface.

Andruil's breeches grew where the ruin opened to the sky, a wild and unruly plant she loved for the tiny v-shaped flowers that hung in a neat row along a single stalk, like little pants drying on a line.

On she went, growing bolder with each empty room and sunken hallway, grateful for the quiet the dark ruin afforded.

After a time she turned a corner and came upon what must have once been the great hall.

A grand staircase swept down from where she stood into a room with a chantry style ceiling, still partially intact, though at the far end the wooden beams had given way and new moonlight flooded through.

Like so many of the rooms before, this too was flooded, the water starting midway down the steps into the hall, and she could think of no more fitting a thing to do than to go for a swim. Dirthamen, wherever he was, was not in any state to object.

She disrobed, piece by piece, leaving her belongings on the top step, and when she was free of the heavy, mud-spattered armour she stepped down the submerged staircase and into the cool, clear water.

Lavellan pushed off from the steps, aiming for the far end of the hall with slow, lazy kicks, and as she did she reacquainted herself with her elven form, stretching every muscle, delighting in the feel of a body that moved how she wished it to.

Despite the sun having vanished from the sky, there was just enough light to make out the floor of the great hall below her, littered with the remains of ancient tables, golden plates, and what looked to be a shattered eluvian, glinting at the edges of her vision. Each wall was flanked by statues of guardian bears, each bear's hard stone fur replaced by a soft, gently waving aquatic moss. It was both haunting and beautiful.

She swam the length of the hall, and when she reached a massive, broken stain glass window at the far end, turned and started for the ornate columns still holding parts of the vaulted ceiling aloft. She wove between them, kicking, diving, and though joy was a difficult thing to come by these days she allowed herself a tiny measure of it as she dove to the floor of the room and searched among the submerged trinkets, staying under as long as she could manage before breaking the surface and pushing her hair from her eyes.

When she was sure she was clean of the day's sweat and grime, Lavellan floated back to the stairs to retrieve her belongings.

She leaned over to collect her armour, and as she gathered it under her arm something fell to the stone step, landing with a sharp, metallic note.

A small locket lay open on the step, and within, an even smaller crystal.

"Dorian," she gasped, and made a grab for the forgotten locket. She'd been so distracted by her regained form that she'd completely neglected the gift. Her fingers shook with anticipation as she opened it the rest of the way, activated it, and waited for what felt like an age. "Dorian, please be there..."

She needn't have worried.

"It's you! Wait. ...Is it you?"

Lavellan let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding.

"Dorian! I can't tell you how good it is to hear your voice!" Her own echoed through the lonely hall, with none but the bears to hear it. "...have Leliana or Cullen taken command? Charter may work as well, though she lacks the charisma to lead for extended periods and I doubt she -"

"Slower! Also not in elven, please! As beautiful as your language is, I still only know the filthy bits."

Lavellan drew in another breath and gave her head a half shake before beginning again in the common tongue. "I've missed you, Dorian. How are we doing? I can talk here, we're safe."

"Quite well, thank you. Where are you?"

She looked about the room.

"Honestly, I can't tell. In Dirthamen's old palace, but I couldn't point it out on a map. I'm safe for the time being."

"I'll tell the others. You're sure you're in no immediate danger?"

"No more than the rest of us."

"Ahh, so... death is likely imminent. Reassuring! Before I forget, I don't know if you'll be impressed or disappointed, but you were correct about the Orlesians coming back to the table. All it took was the destruction of another of their outposts. Your owl's people work rather quickly. Other than that, plans are moving forward exactly as intended without you. All signs point to Falon'Din being in the Approach, but we lack the numbers to simply march in there and shoo him away-"

"If we wait for those numbers we'll all die of old age. Fereldan still refuses to cooperate unless they spearhead."

"Can you even imagine Teagan at the vanguard? Armour on backwards, drunk, covered in last night's dinner..."

"You're painting a grim picture, this Fereldan attack. You'd make a very effective nightmare demon."

"So they tell me!"

"I'll meet you in the Approach as soon as I can. If I'm not there in a week hold a council to determine a new leader. We've gone through too many eluvians to -"

From somewhere nearby, the sound of old wood groaning on its hinges.

"What was that?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "Give me a moment to find out."

Lavellan twisted in place, and when she did she was met with the wet, black nose of a wolf the size of a young dragon. Above that, two black eyes peered at her, unblinking, and she recoiled just as a massive paw reached between them and swiped the sending crystal to the ground. She made a wild grab for it but he was quicker, and as she watched the great black wolf ground his paw against the stone floor, cracking and twisting the crystal beneath it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been crunching at work for the last month, will be back to less infrequent posts within the week. :)


	15. Fistfuls of Fur, pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan and the Dread Wolf have a chat.

Lavellan choked out a cry of equal parts rage and despair as she launched herself at the wolf's leg. From there it pitched lower, to become a strangled growl as she shouldered against muscle and bone that shifted no more than a stone pillar, and when he still refused to move, she gathered a great handful of black fur in her fist.

"Why! What could you possibly gain from denying me this small thing!"

From above, his head turned to look at her, ears forward, and his eyes betrayed not a hint of emotion.

"If Ghilan'nain were to discover your crystal she would turn it to her ends, without question. We both wish to see your rebellion spared undue harm - were she to find you were still in contact with your organization, I can promise you, she would not look kindly upon it. She knows of our connection, and your actions now interest her greatly."

She tightened her grip on his coat, still willing the leg to move, despite the undoubtedly ruined state of the crystal. "Is empathy an inconvenience to you?"

"The very opposite." As he spoke, in a voice like the dark, unexplored corners of the ruin, she saw the gleam of his curved teeth in a mouth capable of biting an elf clean in half. One ear pivoted away, listening for the familiar crackle of magic or the fall of unwelcome footsteps. "Elgar'nan, June and Andruil are dead - I can assure you, 'dumb luck' is far from the reason for Ghilan'nain's continued existence. However cunning you believe her to be, double it."

In the new moonlight of the sunken hall his black coat took on an inky blue cast. Her own fur had gathered mud and burrs during her time on four legs, and matted itself in tight, uncomfortable knots, but his was immaculate, smooth, and though she was loathed to admit it, pleasantly soft against her palm. She released it and stepped away.

While he scanned the room for danger, lifting his snout to sniff the damp air, she considered gathering her belongings and dressing herself in an effort to save face. Even in the low light he was sure to have noted her lack of clothing, but remained polite enough to avoid mentioning it. Scrambling for her clothing, however, would be acknowledging the now vast gulf of power between them, and so she remained where she was, naked, hair streaming with water, and fixed the wolf with a cool look of her own.

"Did it ever cross your mind to start this conversation by saying as much? I know how you like to withhold information. For our protection." Experience had shown her that sarcasm was rarely a good look, but if nothing else it was satisfying.

A bead of water charted a new course down her bare calf as she continued, his focus on the ancient stained glass at the far end of the great hall.

"You assume we'll disagree or fight you over it, and so you make the decision for us. We think too short term, while you've seen this all before and know the more sensible path."

"There is an element of truth to this, though you phrase it with a bluntness that I would not."

"Were you always this arrogant?"

"Perhaps." He turned his sleek, pointed head in her direction once more. "You came to your position with little knowledge of battlefield strategy, and so you listened to Commander Cullen. You did the same with the Nightingale and her spies. You trust their knowledge because they have previous experience. I too have experience that you do not, though my advice is not favorable to you."

She ran her hand across her mouth. "Unbelievable."

"You should not be here," he said, his gaze sweeping over her frame. "Lingering for either of us is... unwise."

"What did he do that has you all so concerned?"

Solas seemed to consider the question for a time, eyes closed, then regarded her thoughtfully. "Dirthamen is unpredictable."

It was no answer at all, but he seemed disinclined to elaborate, and moved with regal, liquid steps towards the nearest corridor, ducking his head under a low archway. Where he'd stood a moment before, the sending crystal was indeed shattered - it lay dull and fragmented on the grey stones - and any magic it had once contained had ebbed away into nothing. Another hairline crack in a heart shot through with them.

"I wish you could feel what I feel," she said, standing above Dorian's gift, resisting the urge to collect it.

"As do I," he said, and in the ensuing silence she heard the crows squabbling among themselves from somewhere far above.

The Dread Wolf sighed, his chest rising and falling. "I will see you to the Western Approach as soon as tomorrow evening, but please, come with me from this place. It holds too many uncertainties."

It was as good of an offer as she was going to get, so she nodded and stepped to her discarded armor, while he averted his eyes towards a mural worn smooth and illegible by time.

*****

Together, through the moonlit ruins they made their way towards the camps, each bearing the yoke of the other's presence for a time without speaking.

He broke the silence as they neared a collapsed wall with a large hole in the masonry - a different one from where she'd entered.

"How does Ghilan'nain treat you?"

She mulled the question over as she stepped around a fallen piece of window tracery. "As well as you'd expect. She hasn't been shy in her desire to to use me to topple you, she treats the Dalish in her camp like expendable servants - which is no real surprise - and she turned me into a wolf, which was... I'm not in any hurry to wear the ears again. No disrespect intended."

"None taken, it is not for everyone."

"I spoke with her this afternoon. She's forced me into a stalemate that I didn't see coming."

He made a low, thoughtful sound, whether of agreement or sympathy she couldn't say.

"While we're on the subject of wolves," she said, steering the conversation away from Ghilan'nain's offer, "It seems a little warm for this particular coat. Isn't it more comfortable for you as Solas?"

"It is."

"But."

"But it unsettles Ghilan'nain's people and inspires my own, which is not without some value. And it is in our best interests that I remain this way in your presence."

"Ahh," she said, a hand finding purchase against stone as she stepped from the ruin onto the sprawling, open lawn.

"Agreed. I have shown... poor judgement in our previous dealings. It should not happen again."

"Solas," she began, his name careful and measured, but her reply was cut short by a pleased holler from the borders of his camp, and their attention was drawn to the near end of the lawn, where a sentinel shouted a welcome with palpable relief.

"Stay on this side tonight," said the wolf, looking down at her. "A night free of your captor would put both our minds at ease."

Before them, the flags of either camp waved lethargically in the night wind, and two armies, parted down the centre by a band of grass, waited. 

She licked her bottom lip.

"One night, Fen'Harel."


	16. Morally Grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan sheds Ghilan'nain's nonsense for a night, only to run headfirst into Fen'Harel's.

The return of Fen'Harel from the ruins brought about a ripple of relief from his people, and quiet, anxious gatherings around campfires became jovial, almost celebratory. There was wine (from where Lavellan wasn't sure) and ale and some form of city elf mead made from a strange, floral pear. It was offered to her, sheepishly at first, from young, mortal elves who knew precisely who and what she was. They muttered 'Herald' and 'Inquisitor', though with the recent return of their gods (and not-gods) the decidedly human honorifics seemed to lack the power they once had.

They bowed awkwardly. They pressed wooden cups of wine into her hand and the Dalish among them were eager to welcome her to their fires, offering her the best seat, on the side opposite the drifting wood smoke.

Their welcome was so warm, their interest in her so great, that when she finally managed to step away from those gathered she found Solas gone, having vanished among the people and tents and gently waving banners.

Which was to be expected, she supposed. He Who Hunts Alone had things to do, power structures to upend, deities to crush.

Friends to betray.

Ghilan'nain's camp could wait for the morning. In the meantime, Lavellan preferred the company of a people that smiled and snort-laughed and asked too-personal questions over those that fixed her with scathing, wary looks if they bothered to look at all.

The hospitality afforded her was surprisingly warm when she considered the recent past - a band of her people had skirmished with the Dread Wolf's not a month before - but their enthusiasm seemed genuine, and before long she found herself sipping wine and listening to battle tales from his people's recent encounter with June. Some still donned bandages. She answered questions as best she could about her time with the Inquisition and delicately sidestepped talk of her current endeavors, as those current endeavors involved thwarting everything Fen'Harel was hoping to achieve.

Abelas was there, arms folded across his chest, declining quiet offers of mead with a slight dip of his head. Lavellan chanced a glance in his direction, and when their gaze met, he nodded an acknowledgment before returning his focus to the story at hand.

Around her second cup of pear mead a shy Dalish woman - bared faced, though dressed of the people - cleared her throat. She tucked a strand of chestnut hair behind an ear and knelt at Lavellan's side.

"I don't mean to interrupt... Inquisitor Lavellan, is this a bad time?"

The moon was now fully overhead and Lavellan had been toying with the idea of finding a place to bed down, but she smiled as warmly as the hour would permit. "What can I do for you?"

"I can't believe this, I'm going to tell my friend in Denerim that you were here."

Lavellan opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get a word in, the woman had lifted her hands towards her.

"Would you take this? As a token of my clan's gratitude? You were such an inspiration to all the women in my clan. And the men, too! But mostly the women, you know how it is." In the outstretched hands, a fried cake, crispy at the edges, with violet berries baked into it.

Lavellan set her cup aside and leaned forward to accept the offering. The cake crumbled a little as it was placed in her hand, but looked delicious, and was, on top of that, still warm. One look at the treat was a reminder of how infrequently she'd been eating, and how little she trusted Ghilan'nain's hospitality and motives. Again she moved to speak, and again was spoken over.

"Are you here to help? It would be an honor to fight alongside you," the woman breathed. She rubbed her empty hands over the sides of her pants to rid them of crumbs. "It's so romantic, your joining forces. When they said you were married I didn't believe it, but I'm so glad you've finally come to our side. It felt wrong without you."

It was all Lavellan could do not to open her mouth and push the cake in whole. At least then she wouldn't have to explain to the starry eyed girl that she was waiting to see how long she could hold out before the world expected her to slip a knife between the ribs of her rumored husband.

"Thank you, this looks wonderful," she said instead. "I'm pleased I could've helped the women of your clan in some way."

The young woman climbed to her feet and curtsied - a curiously human act. "Thank you so much. You're as kind as they say you are!" And she hurried away towards a handful of gathered friends waiting just out of earshot, their posture eager.

Lavellan cleared her throat, noted the heat rising on her face, and felt a rush of gratitude when a spirit on the far side of the fire lifted his voice in a loud, quick song about two giants squabbling over a beautiful rock.

*****

When, from mead or moonlight, she could no longer keep her eyes open, Lavellan stood and made her quiet goodnights. The singing and storytelling continued, fading as she made her way across the lawn in search of a bed. Or a patch of grass. Or a pile of rusted arrowheads. In truth, anything would've been more comfortable than trying to pass another night in Ghilan'nain's red tent, the woman's sleeping form almost close enough to touch.

She took a long step over a misplaced shield left in the grass, and as she did, Devotion, the spirit from her earlier visit, floated to her side.

"Good evening. Are you enjoying yourself?"

"It's..." She fixed her gaze on a nearby aravel, repurposed to hold arms, and ran her hand across the back of her neck. "...complicated. But thank you for asking. It feels good to be seen again."

"You were seen before, though quietly. I'm to show you to a bed, if you wish."

"I do wish that, thank you. You're very kind, Devotion."

Across the forward camp, around sleeping horses and elves they went until they came across a moss green tent, bigger than the surrounding ones. As they stepped through the threshold it became very apparent who the tent actually belonged to, and Lavellan dug her heels in, her focus intent on a collection of small paintbrushes lying across a small table.

"Devotion, I appreciate the offer, but I've decided I'm happy to sleep outside. It's a warm night." With one quick scan of the familiar tent she turned to leave, but the blue spirit floated calmly just in her path. For a heartbeat she considered stepping through it - spirits lacked much in the way of physicality - but even the thought of it seemed uncouth.

"I must insist, as this was his request."

"You're joking." She scanned the swirling energy where their eyes might have been. "You're not joking."

"I rarely joke these days, though once I was quite adept at it."

"Of course."

Devotion shook their head. "He mentioned that you would object, and I am to convince you, if possible." The spirit gestured with a diaphanous hand. "You were behind the gate, but he had no choice but to release the chain."

Speaking in riddles and impressions was a spirit trait not unique to Cole, as she'd learned in recent years, but if that was Devotion's attempt at persuasion, it fell a little short.

"Why do you follow him, Devotion?" Surely a spirit of devotion could be devoted to any number of things. Why Solas over Falon'Din? Over Dorian? Over a druffalo?

The spirit paused, and when it spoke, its tone mirrored her own. "It's complicated."

Lavellan smiled. "Thank you again for the offer, you've been nothing but accommodating, but I'll be very comfortable outside."

Though she felt somehow ungrateful turning down the spirit's (and by extension, Solas') offer, she was hardly about to move from one demigod's tent to another. She was fully capable of making her own bed, and she did so behind a low stone wall - one of the many small ruins and rock piles dotted about the ancient lawn.

She chose a side of the wall facing away from both camps, though not so close to the ominous darkness of the surrounding forest.

Once content with her choice of campsite, she freed herself of her armour for the second time that night and lay it near at hand. Dressed in little more than a thin tunic that smelled of wood smoke, she settled herself beside the mossy stones and took a deep breath, the stars clear and bright overhead.

*****

When she awoke a short time later, it was to the feeling of fur against her arm. Not covering her arm - the panic of being a wolf once more was short lived - but laying against her bare skin, and when she looked up, it was directly into the eyes of the Dread Wolf.

"I understand your motives for rejecting my offer, though we might've found you something more to your liking."

"This is to my liking."

"I assumed hand carved Orlesian headboards were more to your taste."

Lavellan lay on her back and draped her hand across her stomach, eyeing the dark silhouette at her side. "What would my life have been like, I wonder, if I'd pushed you into the ice river instead of introducing myself? Would it be less sarcastic? Who could say, really."

"Likely not, you would still need to contend with Master Tethras."

"And Dorian."

"And Dorian, certainly."

Lavellan made a contemplative sound, and a short silence fell between them.

"In the library, there were a number of books with collected tales about you. Are any of them true?"

He considered the question for a time, front paws together, a perfect likeness of the statues crafted in his name.

"I've not seen the books in question, and some may contain facets of the truth, however dim, though most are fabrications. Not unlike the rumours created about you during your time as Inquisitor."

"I really like being reminded about those, thank you." Her mouth twisted in a dry half-smile as she recalled the sordid cartoons handed out on Orlesian leaflets. The carefully rendered depictions of the 'Rabbit Queen' attending 'peace negotiations' with Gaspard, with Celine, with just about anyone worthy of making light of. "The story about you tricking Elgar'nan into swimming to the bottom of the lake - untrue, I would assume."

He nodded, slow and thoughtful.

"And the one about the young man attending the funeral. That one seems... not completely out of character if we're being honest." The 'if' was highly dubious.

A pause. "That one is true. And surprisingly unaltered over the years. He chose not to follow through with my reasoning."

"Hard to blame him."

"Agreed."

She shifted her weight, lying to watch him from her side.

"What about the poem where you seduce Ghilan'nain's handmaid?"

"Mistaken identity. That was Falon'Din, though history incorrectly attributes it to me. I'm sure he has feelings on the matter."

"Would he still remember?"

"Very much so."

"Did you ever read any of the tales of your supposed adventures? Knowledge for knowledge's sake?"

The beast's front paw twitched, and he leaned forward to lick the offending spot before answering. "I have, infrequently, though such stories are not for my benefit. Morality lessons are their stock and trade, and true ethical choices are a far murkier pool than folk tales would depict."

"As an artist can you appreciate the fluid nature of them? The rhythm and regional variations? Or are most folk tales tainted due to your experience with them?"

"Again, I can appreciate elements of them. I doubt you appreciated the illustrated versions of yourself, no matter how skilled the hand."

"I appreciated some paintings," she said.

Another thoughtful sound, something not quite a growl.

"You were only a foreboding figure in some," she continued. "According to some of those non-existent books in the library early versions of you outsmarted monsters, rich nobles, Evanuris. Though I suppose you also devoured a fair number of hapless young women for..." She gestured with a vague wave of the hand. "Whatever vanity they inflicted on the world. Those are still very popular with modern clans."

"As a youth I was less likely to object to such depictions. They served a certain grim purpose. Listening to them now seems self-indulgent, to say the least. They were never created for my ears."  
  
She nodded, knowing the feeling all too well. Maryden had crafted a number of songs (some utterly forgettable, some quite catchy) about the great deeds of the Inquisitor, and whenever the bard cleared her throat and plucked the first tentative notes Lavellan's feet brought her quickly from the tavern back to Skyhold proper.

"The devouring didn't seem completely unpleasant."

"It generally wasn't."

"That's very easy for you to say."

"I heard no complaints."

Lavellan laughed, her voice low to avoid attracting the attention of his nearby camp, but the feeling of lightness was quick to fade away.

"After this is over, no matter what way it goes, there'll be new stories. You don't have to be a villain this time around." 

In his current guise, head lifted with a regal air, his expression was difficult to read.

The silence between them returned, longer this time, only eventually broken by Lavellan's hushed voice.

"May our folk tale doubles be morally grey and live forever."

Solas lowered his great head then and she reached for him with not a moment's hesitance, running her fingers through the thick fur at his neck, drawing him closer until she could hold him against her chest, one of his ears brushing gently against her cheek.

"Rest assured, vhenan, there is no way around it," said Fen'Harel.


	17. Fistfuls of Fur, pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan makes a move.

She dreamed of the Dread Wolf.

Not the one lying beside her as she'd drifted to sleep, tail draped over her leg, but a silent version that hounded her through the Storm Coast, who lived in shadows, whose racing footfalls were lost to the crash of the ocean at night.

In bare feet she scrambled up shifting shale and ducked under low hanging branches brought down by furious winds, and if she paused to catch her breath he was there to lunge from the blurry borders of the dream, to bite away pieces of her. The missing pieces didn't bleed, there was no exposed muscle or bone for his trouble, they simply ceased to exist, like they'd never been.

She'd once heard a blind soldier say that it wasn't that he saw only blackness, his lack of sight was more like attempting to see from one's hand, one's back, from the sole of a foot. So too was the bitten away version of herself.

It wasn't him, not really. There was a focus and a brightness about the real Solas in the Fade that this creature lacked. Rather it was a version of himself called up by her mind, a manifestation of her fears all packaged into something simple. It was the fireside Fen'Harel of her childhood, and bit by bit he stole from her - fingers, calves, ribs - until she fell onto the beach and was devoured, the world sliding into nonsense and darkness and bright points of searing pain that she knew to be teeth.

And then Lavellan woke up.

It was still dark. The nightmare felt as though it'd lasted hours, but by the look of the moons above they were still a ways from morning. She shifted her weight against the ground and as she did, found that the slow rise and fall of the wolf's chest had been replaced by the more familiar curves of a man.

Beside her Solas slept on his back, one hand draped across his chest, the other behind his head, his breathing deep and even. When she propped herself up on her elbow to peer down at him he didn’t stir, only slumbered on, dreaming somewhere far away, shielded by distance from her nightmares.

_Kill him now._

The thought came unbidden in a voice that lacked any hesitation, and even Lavellan, moments out of sleep, knew there to be a cruel but just logic to the notion. The kind of decision that Solas might make, though always for the greater good, of course.

Rather than question it or mull it over she acted immediately upon it. In one fluid motion she pushed herself up and slid over his sleeping form, settling herself on his stomach. Her hand reached out to catch him just under the chin, and the Dread Wolf’s throat was warm against her palm.

Fen'Harel's eyes opened, but he made no other movement. She followed his gaze as it searched her features, his chest still rising and falling beneath her.

She had a dagger with her armour. With only one hand it was one of the few weapons she could reliably call upon, but if she reached forward for it she would leave herself wholly open, and she cursed herself for not considering for it beforehand. (From somewhere within, a part of her knew she’d been sabotaged by her subconscious.)

But even if she had seized it first he had the advantage. From past experience she knew him to have a surprising strength, not to mention the use of two hands and the knowledge to turn her immediately to stone, among other things. If he wished it, he could destroy her utterly in the beat of a moth’s wings.

"Don't turn me to stone," she said in a whisper.

"I would only pin myself here." She felt the quiet words against her hand as he spoke.

Her nails bit crescents into the skin at his neck and her breathing came in a quick, fearful pant. She could slit his throat or strangle him here and be done with it all - all the fighting, all the failed diplomacy, the march of armies and the meaningless titles. Retreat to the wild if his people didn't catch her.

(Though they would.)

Unmoored and leaderless, maybe the rebel elves would return to the way things were, and while the idea wasn't the most reassuring - the world before was a heartless place for their people - at least the danger of it being torn from its bedrock would be minimized.

He remained silent, still watching.

She looked about her for something - anything - to hasten him to death, but the nearby rocks were just out of reach and she kicked herself for not having slept in his tent, where at least she might've strangled him with his bedsheets.

Furious tears prickled at the corners of her eyes as she leaned against her hand, and he shut his eyes, brow creasing as she tightened her grip to deny him (of air, of everything else).

But death by arrow and staff on the field of combat was one thing. Throttling a man barely out of sleep was another entirely.

Murdering Solas with the same hand that would once weave fingers with his was unspeakable.

Lavellan gasped and sat back, removing her hand from his throat and drawing it across her face, pausing with it across her mouth. A turncoat tear fell, leaving a trail as it went, but like her it wasn’t long for this world and was quickly brushed away.

Wisely, she thought, he said nothing, though whether that was a choice or due to the rough treatment of his throat it was difficult to say. His look, however, spoke volumes. As he recovered, inhaling slowly, pained and dry, Solas regarded her with something that she recognized as not sympathy, but empathy.

An understanding of the moment for what it was, the implications of her drawing back. Where he had gone through it when faced with the need to betray his kind, she could not. Not now.

He exhaled, and there was an understanding between them that the moment had passed.

The hand at her mouth covered a shaky gasp and she fell against him, pulling him into an uneven embrace and expecting him to weather it as he had her hand at his throat, with silence and an unsettling patience. Instead, his arms wrapped around her and she felt his ragged breath by her ear and murmurings in an Elven that was too old for her to know.

Her mouth found his and when she kissed him, she met no resistance, his hands moving to her face, sweeping away the hair from her eyes.

"Give me this one thing," she said when she broke away, and she felt him nod against her temple. His hand went to the smooth skin at the back of her neck and Solas pulled her down as he leaned into the kiss.  

*****

During her very first visit to the library she’d picked a book at random and within it had detailed (with showy language and great pride) the long, lingering lovemaking of the ancient elves. Her fingernails had been rimmed with drying Qunari blood at the time, and as she turned a page she remembered hearing her mail jingling with the movement. It had been the place, but not the time to explore such things, and the book had been shelved with scarcely more than a page read.  

(Though not forgotten.)

It was this lack of urgency which seemed to guide him as he drew her to her feet and to the nearby treeline. Once beyond, just far enough in to avoid the patrolling sentinels, he drew her closer and knelt to begin removing her leg wraps.

She lay her hand against his shoulder, watching his fingers unloop and unwrap the leather, weaving backwards with practiced hands until all that remained were strips lying across the forest floor, and when he was done he stood, catching her tunic by the hem and pulling it up and over her head. She removed the rest, pushing his hand away, and when she was free of cloth and metal their roles reversed.

Lavellan knew there was a furrow to her brow as her own hand worked to free him of Fen’Harel. Any gold, anything wrought or etched, fine fabrics or furs, they were all affectations meant for others, bits of folklore made real and they were dropped on the ground along with the unspooled leather.

And beneath it all, he looked just as she’d remembered.

(And beneath it all, she looked just as he’d remembered.)

He made love to her the first time, which she’d always thought a cloying euphemism for hopeless romantics and the sweet Cassandras of the world, needlessly saccharine, but with every roll of his hips from above and the way he swept her hair just over her shoulder when it veiled her face she could think of no more fitting a word.

He brought her slowly to edge and stayed there, as much for her as for him, kissing her neck, his movements familiar, though the familiarity sat strangely. He was no more a fussy hedge mage than she was the Herald of Andraste, and while she still maintained some power between them, it was not the lethargic, confident kind she’d held in the past. She was no more capable of summoning him to her quarters or backing him (with a slow, pointed smile) into a corner somewhere than he was of permitting such things.

The second time she climbed atop him, anger driving her as she pinned him against the fallen leaves and fucked him, which was a far less cloying word but also fitting in its own way. Her hand held him to ground, his own grip too-hard around her waist and when she came with him deep inside her she cursed him in her own Elven, startling an owl into flight in the canopy above. Solas bit the skin of her shoulder in reply, hard enough to hurt, perhaps enough to bleed and the dream of the Dread Wolf devouring her came back with a fury.

Lavellan peered down at him as she caught her breath, hand splayed across his chest. It was tempting to say something, to acknowledge how difficult they’d made an already impossible thing, but she could think of nothing suitable, and let the matter well enough alone. Even the simple admission of love, the most obvious choice and one she would’ve fallen back on easily at Skyhold, was too treacherous. 

Her skin prickled with dampness between her shoulders and when she shifted off him and fell onto her back a leaf clung fast to her skin. Beside her his breathing slowed and returned to normal, and the two lay in silence, listening to the leaves in the canopy and the quiet chirp of nearby crickets. If she ignored her missing arm, the foreboding presence of the nearby camps and just about everything else, she could almost imagine they were camping, as before, off on some mission or another, sleeping under the banner of the Inquisition. 

He didn’t stay Solas for long. 

She shut her eyes and swallowed, and when she turned her head she was met with the sight of the enormous black wolf, who stretched, (four of the six eyes thankfully closed) then settled easily against the wooded backdrop with no apparent plans to depart. At least not yet.

She ran the back of her wrist across her mouth. Lavellan had assumed he would leave immediately, if only to keep his sentinels from wondering, but they seemed understanding of his absences and he seemed inclined to wander, so perhaps they were more concerned with other, pressing matters. Perhaps they knew. 

Lavellan collected her thin tunic and, with some effort, slipped it over her head, not out of modesty, but sheer Dalish practicality. There were, after all, hungry bugs in the woods.

She rolled onto her side and stretched out beside him, fingers clutching his black fur, and he lay his head on his massive paws and closed his eyes. She could feel sleep creeping in, attempting to reclaim her, and because it was so insistent, she let it.

Not far away, two ravens, perched atop a crumbling lintel, spread their wings and started west. 

 


	18. One Day Earlier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ghilan'nain has a proposal, and Lavellan has little say in the matter.

 Ghilan'nain didn’t slouch as she rode. She remained regally upright, chin lifted just enough to give the appearance of casual disinterest - something Vivienne had attempted to counsel a young Inquisitor on in the early days of the Inquisition. Before the unpleasantness.

Before some of the unpleasantness. It was truly a bottomless cup, that.

“So,” said the ancient mage after a time.

Lavellan, seated just in front of her on the massive halla, turned her head only a fraction of an inch before she decided against meeting Ghilan'nain’s gaze. Inane small talk was not something she was especially keen to try with the Mother of Halla. Silence and a feigned interest in the passing scenery was a far safer alternative.

“You were in possession of his orb’s power.”

“I was. He’s since reclaimed it,” Lavellan said, tone as even as she could steer it.

From the corner of her eye, Lavellan saw Ghilan'nain’s brows lift. “I’ve seen that your kind are less attuned, but can you feel nothing now? Do you not see it when you look in a mirror, or hear it when you speak?”

“When I speak?”

“You’re doused in it. He may have taken it back, but the echoes are there and they are not without their own power, in a way.” And her next thought was seemingly more for herself, “To see his face the moment he realized…”

Lavellan watched the line of marching feet and hooves before her, rising and falling, stretching into the greenery ahead, vanishing into the distance.

“I can feel it, but not the way you do,” she said after a moment.

“But you do feel it.”

“I feel pain, if that’s what you mean. It started in my hand where I’d touched the orb and eventually spread to my lungs. Now it’s… just… everywhere. It’s not pleasant.” An understatement, of course. Even now she could feel it, a constant, insistent pressure, an ache when she moved too quickly or breathed too deeply.

“I’m a little surprised you’ve lasted this long - your young people are like so much paper. It’s strangely impressive.”

Another of those half-insult, half compliments the ancient elves were so adept at. “That’s what I hear.”

“I have something that will help you with your pain.” Ghilan’nain shifted the reins to one hand and leaned sideways, reaching for the clasp to the saddle bag. Beneath her, Lavellan felt the halla compensate for the unbalance, not even bothering to turn its head. Whomever the halla had been before, whether favorite servant, betrayed lover or some hapless messenger caught in her wrath, they were now a loyal, patient steed.

Lavellan gave the animal a gentle scratch.

Ghilan'nain straightened, as she returned to her former position in the saddle, shoulders back, she held an orb aloft.

It was not unlike Solas’ orb, made from some unplaceable rock, radiating warmth and magic, but unlike his, Ghilan'nain’s orb was whole and unmarred.

And just there. There had been an orb inches away the entire time they’d been riding and the woman now held it in her hand as casually as one might a delicious looking apple.

“No,” Lavellan said, writhing away. The movement was immediate and almost on instinct, but there was little distance to put between herself and the orb, held so lovingly in Ghilan’nain’s hand. “Please, I want nothing more to do with those.”

Ghilan'nain’s voice was all sharp edges and hard lines. “You understand this is not a request, don’t you? This is a balm to your pain - no gratitude from you?” The orb began to glow a soft red.

As if responding to the moment, Fen’Harel’s magic seemed to rouse itself and seized Lavellan in a wave of sudden agony. She gave a loud gasp and doubled over on the halla, who continued on, steady, following the line ahead.

Ghilan'nain held her firmly around the waist, keeping her in place on the saddle. “Do not look down upon my hospitality. This will rid you of his poisoned magic for good.”

Fingers shaking, Lavellan gripped the fur at the halla’s neck and through clenched teeth said, “At least tell me what you plan to do. I can’t go back to being an animal again.”

“Are you as demanding around him?”

Of course, and a thousand times more, was Lavellan’s furious first thought even as she twisted to avoid the orb, the ancient magic straining within her.

“We’ll take a step back together, you and I.”

Ghilan'nain stopped the halla just off the side of the trail and whistled, a haunting little melody in four notes - some unfamiliar bird’s call - and it was less than a minute before a sentinel on a young hart stepped towards them and inclined her head. If she thought anything of Lavellan’s pained panting, she said nothing.

“Carry on ahead, we’ll join you shortly.”

The sentinel nodded their understanding and guided the hart away. Ghilan’nain’s army continued walking, stepping just to the side to make room for the halla and its two riders.

“Let’s see if I understand you and your aims from what my sentinels have gathered. You hope to leave this camp and reunite with your own people. From there you hope to collect enough of you to stop Fen’Harel, then presumably myself, then… somehow kill Dirthamen and Falon’Din, and all before you die?”

“Yes,” said Lavellan thickly. “Those are the aims.”

The halla had begun to turn, picking its way from the well-trod trail into the underbrush, away from the line of marching elves and animals.

“What if I told you you had your order wrong, and that you could kill one of the brothers, then myself, then Fen’Harel and have your world back?” Ghilan'nain brushed a low branch away with the back of her free hand, while beneath them the halla’s hooves rustled the sun-baked leaves.

“I would think that’s unlikely,” Lavellan managed. “I would assume you’re being duplicitous.”

“Because he told you I am.”

“I’ve been to the market. I don’t need him to tell me that some deals are too good to possibly be true.”

Ghilan’nain made a quiet, thoughtful sound and held the orb just ahead of Lavellan. Solas’ magic roiled and bristled and a black haze crept across her field of vision, but the orb began to glow a brighter shade of red and the pain began to ebb away again, retreating from a roar to a whisper.

“This is temporary,” said Ghilan’nain.

“Thank you,” Lavellan breathed.

“You were his paramour.”

Lavellan, still recovering, gulped a breath of forest air, fists still clenching the soft white fur as the animal stepped into a quiet clearing. “Yes.”

“But you want him dead.”

She could feel a bead of sweat tracing a line down the side of her face, and Lavellan slowly straightened and wiped it away.

“I don’t want him to die, but we need to stop him. Solas being dead was supposed to be the last option.”

“I’m going to speak nothing but the truth for the rest of this conversation. If you choose to doubt me, then you do so out of hubris and at your peril.”

Lavellan resisted the almost overwhelming urge to scoff.

“Fen’Harel and I will travel to this Western Approach, and once there, we’ve agreed to dispatch Falon’Din together. It’s long overdue. After that, Fen’Harel will attempt to kill me, and he will succeed. I can plan all I please, but he has greater numbers and stronger magic now that Mythal helps him, and it will be a simple matter for him.”

Lavellan remained silent.

“From there, you’ll be alone with Fen’Harel and possibly Dirthamen, should he choose to show up, though I doubt it. With his brother gone what purpose would it serve?”

In one easy, graceful gesture Ghilan'nain laid the reins over the halla’s neck and slipped to the ground, leaving Lavellan alone on the animal. She strode the length of the clearing, the shattered horns of her twisted halla crown casting an unsettling shadow on the forest floor just beyond her.

“You will have stayed free of the fight on my orders, and possess my orb, and because I will unlock it for you, it will listen to only you.”

Lavellan’s eyes narrowed, and still she said nothing.

“As you have my orb, Fen’Harel will likely attempt to kill you, but may hesitate, and in this time you must use my magic to strike him down. It will succeed for you where it would not for me as the battle with Falon’Din and myself will have depleted his magic, and his defenses will be weaker around you. From there, with the Dread Wolf gone, the danger to your people will have passed, and you need only contend with Dirthamen, should he show his face. You may use the orb to help you for that, it will be yours from then on.”

“Why would you do this? Or even tell me this?”

“I do this because Fen’Harel needs to be removed for both our ends. For you it’s simple self-preservation, for me vengeance and justice.”

“For when he trapped you?”

“For Andruil. Ask no more questions about her.”

“But you’re … this is desperation, what you’re proposing.”

Ghilan'nain seemed unfazed. “Desperation is a tool. You’ve hunted, you’ve seen a cornered animal and know what a danger it poses.”

“What’s stopping me from walking up to him and just… telling him this. Why would you trust me not to, knowing how what I feel?”

“He plans to bring back my world, which looks nothing like this one, I can assure you. Frankly, I don’t care what happens to this place, but you do, and I doubt you care to see it burned to the stones. And make no mistake, he will be sympathetic to your cause and lament your passing on a scholarly level even as flesh melts and towers crumble.”

Lavellan smoothed out the fur at the halla’s neck where she’d gathered tight handfuls, and her brow creased as she absorbed what she’d been told. “You’d unlock your orb-”

“And give it to you, yes.”

“Why is your magic no match for his with you wielding it?”

Ghilan'nain sighed. “I told you earlier, our skills lie in different areas. I could wound him if I had the element of surprise, but he would eventually recover and I would be dead. And then you would be dead shortly after, not by his hand, maybe, but by this residual magic in your veins. Take the orb, use it, slay the wolf and be saved.”

“I think I hate this.”

The expression on Ghilan'nain’s face was all dry disbelief. “I care very little for what you like, if you haven’t noticed, and I care even less for putting my legacy in your possession, but I’m familiar with my odds and his deception, and I can go to my death content in knowing Fen’Harel won’t be far behind.”

She stepped towards the halla and the seated Lavellan and held the orb aloft, cradled between her gloved hands.

“Do you agree?”

“I don’t see that I have a choice in this.”

“Then you and I are more alike that you care to admit. Put your hand out.”

Solas’ orb had set her on a path she could’ve never imagined. The mere act of plucking it from the floor had led to a chain of events that, at its mildest, had shaken every nation in Thedas to its very core. At the other end of that spectrum lay the complete annihilation of everything and everyone she’d ever known, so when she offered her hand, it was with fingers that trembled.  

“This will eventually claim my other hand, won’t it.” It was a ridiculous statement, and selfish in the grand scheme of things, and Lavellan immediately regretted giving it voice.

The orb was set gently in her remaining palm. It was warm, heavy, even comforting as it began, slowly at first, to hum through her body with a familiar - yet curiously different - sensation. Like singing a song once, then singing it again in a different octave.

“I would assume you have greater problems than that.”


	19. The Western Approach

The following morning it was not Solas’ face she awoke to, but the somber, drawn features of Abelas as he knelt beside her in the long grass. It was not a great departure - both men were forever furrowing their brow or narrowing their eyes at something, but given the night before, she would’ve much preferred one scowling face over the other.

“You’re not Fen’Harel.”

Abelas merely stood, blinking slowly in the cool dawn light. “No, I am not.”

Lavellan shifted her weight onto her elbows and looked to the side, where the grass was pressed flat, and otherwise uninhabited. She’d expected as much, and her next words mirrored the thought.

“Not a ‘he who hunts alone’,” she continued, pointing her toes and stretching. Her bare legs were dotted in bruises both faded and fresh.

Abelas lifted his chin.

“No god of misfortune,” said Lavellan with a smile that was entirely too wry for the hour.

“In fairness, neither is he.”

She sat up, rolled her shoulders, and fixed him with a mild but pointed look.

“Though I suppose,” he conceded, “That may be a matter of perspective.”

Accepting an offered hand, Lavellan climbed to her feet, grateful that her past self had thought to pull on her tunic before falling asleep. Abelas carried himself with a quiet dignity, and though the Dalish skewed towards the practical about nudity, Mythal’s former guardian seemed like he hadn’t been seen out of his armour in at least a century.

Based on her state of dress and location he’d found her in, he surely knew what had transpired, but had the tact and discipline to refrain from commenting.

“The camps are leaving, aren’t they?” she said.

He nodded. “Ghilan’nain has requested you.”

“Could I convince you to go instead of me?”

“I can think of nothing I would care to do less.”

“Then that makes two of us,” she said, and for a fraction of a second the shadows on his face gave the impression of a smile.

“Thank you, Abelas, I’ll head back.” But before she did, she swept her hair from her eyes and peered upwards at the man. Still a closed book, impossible to read, but hard to dislike all the same. “Good luck. I was always sorry that our first meeting was on such unpleasant terms.” And then, after a moment, “Fight well.”

“And you. I regret that you drew such a card in life.”

There were multiple ways to take such a remark, but as said life had precious few days left in it, she nodded a thanks and took her leave.

On the far side of the field Ghilan’nain’s people were already preparing to depart. It was to be the last full day of travel, and as Lavellan made her way through the two camps morale among both factions seemed high. In part, Lavellan assumed, as they’d be leaving Dirthamen’s decaying old ruin in their dust, and after days of traipsing about the forest those under both banners were ready for another scrap, and eager to teach Falon’Din’s people a lesson in humility.

She saw no sign of Solas among the masses, but there were worse memories to carry with her than those of the night before. For a time he’d seemed - if not happy, then thoughtful and attentive, almost affectionate, as if looking to be swayed. And she’d done her best to be persuasive, all the while pushing aside the needling voice of her conscience.

Back at Ghilan’nain’s tent, the last shelter to be broken down for travel, Lavellan was taken aside by a stern looking sentinel and a weathered leather bag was pressed unceremoniously into her remaining hand.

She didn’t need to look inside to know what it was. The orb remained warm and heavy, and bounced gently against her hip with each movement.

Ghilan’nain, to the side of the sentinel, pursed her lips, brow set in a deep crease, then gestured towards the entrance of the tent and spoke in clipped tones. “Your people depend upon this. Do not forget.”

As if this thought hadn’t occurred to Lavellan. As if she didn’t feel the weight of their lives with every step she took. After days of withholding her scorn, Lavellan righted the bag on her shoulder and said crisply, “Of course.”

One would assume upon looking at her that she carried supplies, perhaps extra rations or camping equipment in the sack. The idea that the ancient foci of a once-beloved god hung at her hip was too preposterous to believe, even, on some level, for herself.

The orb itself was sure to be warded, with which terrible spell she could only guess, but the whole affair still felt gallingly casual for her tastes. There was little to be done about it, however, and she pushed aside the tent flap and stepped into the morning light.

******   

The final eluvian of their journey lay just behind Dirthamen’s ruin. Nestled between two ancient ironwoods, their roots had long since grown about the base of the frame and cemented it in place on the stone plinth just beneath.

At the base both groups waited, both parties uncommonly still. The ravens on the battlements, just beyond the clearing, seemed to lean forward in anticipation, and Lavellan cared little for the way their beady black eyes gawked at those assembled.

Solas, dressed in discomfort as Fen’Harel, all metal and might, stepped to the mirror and lifted a hand just over the surface. It pulsed a dim light, unlocking without protest, then stood patiently, waiting for the first traveler.

But instead of moving through the surface of the mirror, Solas stepped from the overgrown plinth, down the short flight of broken stairs and back to Abelas and his mismatched coterie at the base.

The Dread Wolf’s head didn’t turn even an inch as he strode past Ghilan’nain, and just behind the young god, an intent Lavellan.

Chivalry, like a number of things these days, was truly dead. Lavellan lifted a single brow.

There was little time to feel slighted, however, as the moment Solas turned to address his people the ravens erupted into a sudden cacophony, beating their wings, squawking, shrieking and shitting absolutely everywhere.

Beside her, Ghilan’nain tensed, and even Solas seemed suddenly vigilant, eyeing the creatures with no small amount of caution.

The armies, too, seemed unsettled by the din, but Lavellan knew an opportunity when it presented itself. She tugged the bag close to her body and gave Solas, then Ghilan’nain a quick glance, then sidestepped onto the lowest stone step. When neither Evanuris seemed to take notice, their focus on the battlements above, Lavellan turned and dashed for the eluvian.

It wasn't the greatest of her plans, true, and contained all the consideration of one of Sara's efforts, but the idea of spending another hour in present company seemed maddening at best. Solas would make no objection to her departure (for good or ill), and Ghilan'nain, once attentive, all hospitality, seemed to cool towards the notion of Lavellan's company now that their transaction was - if not complete, then set into motion.

She took the stairs three at a time, and though she heard a note of protest as she darted past a sentinel they had no time in which to properly respond.

Lavellan launched herself through the mirror’s liquid surface, trusting that whatever was on the far side was less harrowing than the armies of doomed gods behind her, and was greeted very suddenly on the other side by a great expanse of cloudless blue sky.

And then, curiously, a sideways lurching sensation and a mouthful of sand.

After scrambling awkwardly to her knees she turned, disoriented, and when she did, saw that the eluvian she’d just emerged from lay flat on its back, its pristine surface dusted by sand and pointing directly at the heavens.

The next person through was sure to have as confusing a welcome to the Approach, but rather than step back through to send them a charitable warning, Lavellan climbed to her feet, spat sand, and started at an even lope down the sandy surface of a massive dune, the leather bag at her back bumping and rolling along with every leap.

The measured lope became faster as the dune descended, her feet leaving indents in the soft warmth, the sand around them slipping and cascading down the surface until settling in the ridges and waves caused by the unceasing wind of the Approach.

And once she reached the base of the dune Lavellan gave one final look behind her (grateful to see no wrathful gods spat forth from the mirror) and turned to the north.

She followed the shadows, away from the evanuris and as fast as her feet would carry her. Away from old gods and constant scheming, from the claustrophobic feeling of their gaze and the guilt of a missed opportunity to end matters once and for all. Her weakness in that moment haunted her, but rather than mire herself in doubt, it would serve as a cautionary tale.

Lavellan ran until the dune became all but a speck in the distance and sweat prickled against her bare skin. Cullen, Dorian, Lilliana and what remained of her resistance lay perhaps a day’s journey away, and when she reached them she would add a new weapon to their arsenal.


	20. Blood

At nightfall she made camp. Typically if the Dalish bothered to cross the Approach they saved their traveling for night and slept during the day, mimicking the sensible behavior of the animals that made their home there, but with two armies behind her and one before there was no time to waste. The afternoon had been spent in a determined march that left her legs unsteady, her skin hot and sore to the touch.

Her camp was meager and little more than a tiny fire set beneath a low, rocky outcropping, but it was quiet and peaceful as she ate the small amount of dried meat and drank the water that she’d squirreled away. No spirits sat overly close, the lizards were just that, and not magically transformed elves, and there was no great black wolf to regret.

(At least not in person. Conceptually it was another matter.)

When she was finished her simple meal she dusted her hand against her tunic and crossed one leg over the other. She reached into the bag and retrieved the orb, cradling the heavy object in her palm. Her orb. Ghilan’nain had given it away freely, after all.

For a time she sat and simply stared at it in the flicker of the fire. It was a such an odd, even ugly little thing, but within its strange ridges and whorls it carried the power to, if need be, destroy Fen’Harel and his terrible plans once and for all.

Her fingertips traced a ridge along the surface.

Ghilan’nain had unlocked the orb and given her the briefest of overviews, but this was the first time she’d been alone with the relic. She closed her eyes and felt the hum of an ancient song.

Ghilan’nain wasn’t wrong, her magic was very different than that of Fen’Harel’s, and unlocked, the orb was all too willing to share. Where his crackled and coursed, hers began to melt and flow.

Within Lavellan, and seemingly of its own volition, the new magic slowly surrounded what was left of his unstable energy and seemed to coat it, smothering the sharpness, wearing away the points until what was left was a quiet void.

If his magic was the fire, Ghilan’nain’s was the water poured onto the coals.

Alone and protected by the wind ravaged stones, Lavellan took a long, deep breath, expecting an ache to flood her lungs but feeling nothing. No pain, no tightness, just the sensation of herself as she’d been before the events of Haven. She’d almost forgotten what such a thing felt like.

Despite Ghilan’nain’s motives and manipulations, Lavellan couldn’t help but be momentarily thankful for the respite. If he was to be believed, (and he was always so convincing) Solas hadn’t meant to cause such suffering, but there was no setting aside that he had. Which was the man all over. With his magic quietly purging itself from her body, however, she found her focus that much clearer.

The healing nature of Ghilan’nain’s orb extended to the rest of her as well. When she focused on a pale jagged line across the side of her arm - a long scarred over gift from a furious Hakkonite - the skin around it seemed to press together, swallowing the scar and leaving not a mark behind.

This power was indeed a different beast. Perhaps no control of the Fade, but a malleability of living things, not unlike clay. The ability to push and form and alter a body into whatever shape she so chose, be that hart or hound, injured or intact.

The realization was followed by an immediate glance to the space where her arm had been. For a time she stared at the empty air. Surely it would be possible to reform what was lost. Ghoulish as the thought may be, it was worth considering. Though not now. Striding onto the battlefield with two flesh and blood hands was a sure way to immediately call suspicion upon herself, and the less scrutiny she could raise, the better.

And strategy aside, she was more or less at peace with the loss at this point in her life. In theory it served as a constant reminder of vigilance when it came to all things Fen’Harel. Or it had, before she’d betrayed that notion - and her people - by pinning their greatest foe to the grass for a night. (And being pinned in turn.)

“Focus, focus.”

With great effort she turned her attention back to the orb.

Like the arm, Lavellan was content with the nicks and scars she’d accumulated over the course of her short life. The scar across her arm was not from a pleasant time, true, but it felt dishonest to shed that moment and its effect on her body. If it was possible to heal a scar, might it be possible to bring one back?

She cleared her throat, looked to the unmarred skin, and remembered the little pale line.

The orb was warm against her hand.

The next moment she gave a strangled gasp as the skin split, the arm parting in such a clean, unnatural way that it took her body several seconds to rouse itself and respond as it should. Blood surged forth, flowing from the wound and coating her arm in a spiderweb of red that dripped onto the sand beneath.

A short, panicked heartbeat later and the wound was sealed again. Not back to the original scar, but once again flawless, healed, as if no sword had ever sliced there. With an unsteady hand she wiped the blood on the sand. It wouldn’t do to lose body fluids now, in the scorching Approach of all places.

Of course Ghilan’nain could harm as well as heal. The notion was grim but useful, even if she’d yet to grasp proper control of the magic. Controlling the power of the relic was like attempting to steer a wagon with a team of newly trained halla. She could point it in a direction, she could pray and feign confidence, but whether or not she arrived there was another matter entirely.

What she needed was a guide. Ghilan’nain herself was impossible. What little Lavellan had gleaned from her had been through impatient answers to questions she must’ve thought rudimentary at best. The woman clearly assumed a level of knowledge that Lavellan didn’t have access to, and it was too late to press the issue.

But Lavellan was nothing if not resourceful, and if she was looking for deep knowledge on the matter, there was one avenue yet open to her.

***

Something about Ghilan’nain’s magic had made lucid dreaming more difficult than it been, which made a certain sense. Carrying the magic of the Dread Wolf, known dreamer mage, through one’s blood was sure to make things a little easier when entering the Fade.

It was typically a simple matter to shift into her dreams, but that night she’d made several attempts before finally stepping onto the stones of the library, and once there, there was a dimness about the space that had been lacking in earlier visits. Still, she willed herself to the reading room and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that Fen’Harel’s tomes - the bookshelves full of white, leather-bound volumes on his dealings with Ghilan’nain - were still there.

What better way to learn about the nature of the woman’s ancient magic than through the critical lens of Solas’ lived experience.

She tipped a book from the shelf at random and brought it to the table, where she opened it and slipped into the nearest chair.

Like the library itself the book was unstable, its pages sometimes difficult to read. She squinted and turned it, doing her best to push through the strange haze that Ghilan’nain’s magic seemed to cause while in the Fade. It was frustrating, sometimes slow going, but she managed to make it all of ten minutes into the first chapter before a voice broke the peace of the space.

“This is madness. Accepting Ghilan’nain’s help is precisely the avenue I had advised against. Whatever agreement you’ve come to, this is nothing but a ruse on her end and folly on y-”

“Solas,” she said, looking up, and his name stopped him in his tracks at the top of a small staircase that she was sure hadn’t been there a minute before.

He stood, dressed simply, in his cream coloured sweater, doing away with the trappings of showy armour. This, she thought, added a level of unfairness to their conversation, but she continued regardless.

“Will all of Varric’s books be in this library after the Veil comes down? When he’s ash, will it be just the bestsellers, or do you plan on housing his entire body of work?”

Solas inhaled through his nose, his mouth a thin line. “You should not do this.”

“Probably not, no.” She turned a page, leaning in to inspect an illustration of a hulking giant penned in Solas’ familiar hand. “You want to help your people, I want to save mine. If I have to make a deal with every last demon in the Fade I will, and if that demon is Ghilan’nain, then so be it.”

He moved to the end of the table and leaned forward, fingertips pressed against the bare wood. “Whatever pact you’ve made, end it now. You are steeped in her magic, and I can only fathom why. You are unquestionably driven and resilient, but you cannot possibly hope to wield the magic of the most powerful blood mage since the height of our kind.”

The realization gave her pause.

Because of course Ghilan’nain was a blood mage. What else could she have been, given her skills? It seemed so glaringly obvious now - embarrassingly so. And what had Solas said so long ago in Haven? Something about blood magic interfering with the Fade, making dreaming difficult? He’d mentioned never studying blood magic, and Ghilan’nain had spoken of their areas of expertise as two disciplines with little to no overlap.

She managed to stifle the sound of her sudden enlightenment, and with a careful hand Lavellan closed the front cover of the book, the spine gently crackling. “I did well enough with that of the most powerful dreamer mage.”

“This is different!”

“How?” She said sharply, her irritation plain, momentarily overriding the embarrassment. “Because my use of your magic was an honest mistake and there was no manipulation on your end? Because your intent was pure, unlike hers, and only for the betterment of your kind?”

“You do not know her!”

“Or you, it would seem! At least she had the decency to show her true colours from the very beginning!”

“This is nonsensical! Spite is a poor reason for getting in bed with a woman known for casually enslaving others!”

“She’s not known for anything like that, Solas, because you neglected to mention these key facts!”

“Your people were too stubborn to listen to anything that was not a glowing adulation of her.”

“I don’t love this turn of events either, if that isn’t obvious to you, but I’m still here because - like you - I’ve made compromises. Sometimes terrible ones. Spite is just a…” She gestured vaguely with her fingers, casting him a withering look. “...side-benefit.”

Solas threw his hands in the air and turned away.

“Is this what I think this is?” Lavellan continued.

“What is this,” he said, turning on heel to face her again and immediately resuming his loom at the end of the table.

“You suspect that this - whatever she’s planning - might actually work. That this a genuine threat? That my people, my little rebellion, were supposed to remain toothless and tragic and pose no real danger, and then you could pull down the Veil and retreat into the romantic self-flagellation that you so love once the deed is done.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and took his hands from the tabletop. “You lack any perspective on the matter.”

Her brows shot up. Rich of him to criticize on something he might’ve helped with, and had instead withheld. Her next words were an incredulous shout. “Again, because you refused to give it! Get out of my library!”

“The library belongs to all who wish to-”

“Out!”

Solas swept towards the stairwell at the far side of the room, then stopped, a hand on the railing.

“She means to deceive you. My approach is far from ideal-”

Lavellan scoffed the scoff of ages.

“ - but if she or Falon’Din have their way, your people will be enslaved, and you will have had a hand in it.”

“Then we will be no better off than we are now, with you having brushed us aside for a people whose time has come and gone.”

“You would not say such things -”

“You don’t get to act affronted in this,” she said, rising from the table. She couldn’t match his height, but she didn’t have to take his attack literally sitting down.

“Your hardships, though great, are hardly unique. If -”

“Whatever you’re about to say, may want to rethink it!” Her anger was getting the better of her, which was a guaranteed way to lose a fight against Solas, who seemed to thrive on such things. She took a breath in an attempt to center herself. Ghilan’nain’s magic flowed within her once more, just as unbidden as before, and she stopped in place, willing it to recede.

Solas paused, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he peered up and down the length of her body. “You cannot control it.”

She rubbed along the bridge of her nose, then gestured to the nearest book. “I was…I was reading how to when you started shouting like Dorian at 3am." She chanced a look downwards, and was met with the unnerving sight of the lower half of her legs flickering, then beginning to dim. “What’s happening?”

“Her magic has no foothold in the Fade,” he said. “In truth, it’s impressive you’ve lasted as long as you have here.”

“Would everyone stop saying that?”

Solas left the stairwell and moved closer, watching. “Our magics were never able to exist in the same space for long. There is no true blood in the Fade - there is nothing for your magic to cling to here.” 

Lavellan lifted her hand, turning it, watching the skin slowly fade at the edges. “This… This will be permanent, won’t it?”

His brow set in a deep furrow.

“Does this mean I’ll no longer dream?”

Solas met her eyes. “I imagine that will be the ultimate consequence, yes.”

Her dreams hadn’t been the greatest source of comfort over the years, often rehashing the traumatic events she’d seen during her waking hours, but they’d provided an avenue to Solas when all others were closed. To lose them entirely was a sudden blow, and one Ghiln’nain…

“She knew! That this would cut me off from speaking to anything or anyone in the Fade.”

“I suspect so.”

Lavellan looked up, eyes wide. “Wait,” she said, stepping around the table on legs that felt less and less tangible. She started towards him, but with every footfall new areas of her seemed to dim, and when she reached to push a chair out of the way her hand phased right through.

“Solas…”

“I am truly sorry. I had never anticipated Ghilan’nain moving this piece on the board. It was too subtle a gambit for her tastes.”

“Can’t you help? Can we stabilize this somehow?”

The world began to slide sideways, slowly at first, and though he replied with something in sympathetic, troubled notes, it was muffled and became incomprehensible, as if she was trying to listen to a conversation beneath the surface of water.

“Solas! Vhenan!”

She could just make out the silhouette of his form stepping quickly towards her as the library tilted and slid towards a dreamless mire.

“You don’t have to go through with this,” she cried, struggling against the void, but it was inevitable, and without a sound it pulled her forcefully into the darkness and out of the Fade forever.


	21. Casual Cruelty

“That was a chevalier card. Did you just cheat?”

“One, of course not. Two, how dare you.”

“Why do I even bother? Have you cheated every game?”

The answer to that was a truthful no, for what kind of person cheated during the games they were winning? Dorian leaned forward and lifted a finger, a delightful bon mot on his tongue, but the words never came.

Instead, he stared over the shoulder of the expectant Cullen into the yawning, sandy wastes behind him.

A lone figured slipped down a leeward slope in the direction of their rebellion's encampment. Dorian raised his hand to shield his eyes against the last of the day’s sun for a better look. It could be a scout, certainly, but the scout had just made her rounds scant minutes ago and wasn’t due back for some time.

He stood slowly. “Are you seeing this?”

“Dorian, that won’t work.”

“Sh shh shh,” he said, waving his other hand by Cullen’s nose. “Is it me, or does that elf have just the one arm?”

Cullen, still seated, twisted in place, but the movement was too sudden and he was forced to put a hand out as he toppled sideways, a slow motion tumble to the sand.

“Maker’s breath, you’re right…”

Dorian spun in place, looking beyond the shady nook where the two men had been frittering away the time with a much needed game of cards. He fixed his attention on the low, rocky valley where a mismatched collection of tents and aravels lay sprawled in the sand, sheltered by a smattering of boulders. Halla and horse crowded together under the shade of skeletal trees, while their owners, predominantly Elven and Tevene, bolstered by the remains of the Inquisition, went about their daily chores.

“You! Yes - no not you, the one with the this…” Dorian gestured to his own face, mimicking the delicate branching vallaslin of Mythal. “Bring me that water skin, if you please! Quickly now!”

***

Chin in hand, fingers curled against his cheek, Dorian watched with quiet amazement as the slim elven woman made her way through a second heaping bowl of stew, each spoonful vanishing with minimal chewing. Understandably so. Were he held captive by enemy pseudo-deities he likely wouldn’t have been keen to eat the food either.

In the cramped confines of the wooden aravel, legs crossed awkwardly beneath him, Dorian leaned sideways and gave Leliana’s arm a gentle nudge. “It’s impressive,” he whispered.

Leliana shot him a cool look that read, quite plainly, ‘I know you’re you, but please keep your voice down.’

The young Lavellan sat at the back of the aravel, her skin peeling along the length of her nose and up and down the visible skin of her arms. She hadn’t seemed especially bothered by the aggressive shade of red, so focused was she on speaking. And when she wasn’t speaking, her attention was on her supper, spooning mouthfuls of potato and ram, tearing pieces of flatbread into edible morsels.

Upon her unexpected arrival one of the Dalish had given her a new set of clothing - all loose and light in warm shades of brown and grey - and in her lap lay a weathered old sack, nestled close to her body. The muted tones of the practical outfit were at odds with the brightly painted interior of the old aravel, an earnestly and terribly painted scene of halla on the wall just behind her.

(At least he supposed they were halla, though they may have been nugs with horns, who could say.)

“So she just told you this? That those were her plans for the battle?” Across the aravel Cullen looked no more comfortable than Dorian felt in the sweltering little land ship. His head very nearly reached the low ceiling.

“Yes,” said Lavellan, setting the wooden bowl gently on the cheerful yellow floorboards before her. “I’m sure it’s a trap, there must be something she neglected to mention.”

“I don’t like this,” said Leliana, attempting to shift away from the sticky skin of Dorian’s bare arm, but the quarters were so confined it was a lost cause. “Charter and Harding report that the armies of Ghilan’nain and Solas are at least two valleys away if they travel at night, which gives us until tomorrow afternoon until they arrive. Though I suspect we may be looking at the evening with the numbers they have.”

“Tomorrow evening…” Lavellan drummed her fingers absently against the wooden bowl.

“What about Falon’Din’s people?” Cullen held a woven pillow on his lap, more out of necessity than anything else. There simply wasn’t anywhere else to put it.

Leliana gave a little shrug. “Where they’ve been all week. They’re waiting for the others to arrive.”

“Awfully confident,” said Cullen. “Does he have any of the foci himself?”

“Unknown, but Sylaise hasn't been accounted for, so it may be a safe assumption to make,” said Lavellan, pushing a piece of bread around the bottom of the empty bowl. “I have Ghilan’nain’s, and Solas has the remaining orbs, save Dirthamen’s.”

Dorian lifted his chin from his hand. “Do you remember when we had only the one to contend with? Were we ever so young.” He turned to Lavellan, and the mirth ebbed from his voice. “...Can we see it?” 

She licked her lips as she considered. “The orb is warded - whatever you do, please don’t touch it. I can’t tell you what would happen, but I doubt it would feel good.”

Dorian nodded, and when the relic was brought forth from the folds of the sack his brow set in a deep line.

"The Magisterium would lose their collective heads if they knew such an object existed.” He steepled his fingers against his lips, partly in an effort to keep them in his sights. Even for him the orb was tempting, if just for academic purposes.

“We can only hope,” said Leliana.

Lavellan turned the orb in her hand, and from where he sat Dorian made a note of appreciation. He, Leliana and Cullen leaned in (or away, in the case of the latter), and the orb sat innocuously in her hand, glowing a faint red.

Leliana, too, seemed intrigued. “It’s strangely pretty.”

“For all that’s holy don’t drop it.” Cullen shifted closer to the door.

“Did Solas not object to your leaving with it?” Dorian lifted his brows, and from the corner of his eye he saw Leliana look up. The nature of the relationship between former Inquisitor Lavellan and the Dread Wolf still eluded him, as it did so many others. Both seemed prepared to kill the other should it come to that, but when the woman spoke about him - be it in war council meetings or over a casual dinner over the fire - she seemed to do so with an awareness of his faults, but with a firm desire to protect him from the Evanuris. From himself.

Dorian would’ve found a man who intended to murder all of Thedas to be completely undateable, and would likely never speak to him again, let alone in quietly affectionate terms, but he wasn’t an elf and perhaps that was less of a deal breaker where she came from. Surely the sex had to be good, but apocalyptically good? He didn’t know Solas had it in him.

“Solas suspected something, but I can’t say how much.” Another moment on display and Lavellan tucked the orb carefully into the leather bag, then shouldered the strap. “I’ll speak to you all again closer to morning, but for now, I’m going to see my people.”

“By all means,” said Dorian, who, in truth, could’ve used a few more minutes basking in the presence of the orb. “They’ve been anxious to see you, I think.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

***

“What are they doing?” Dorian squinted towards a small fire in the distance, circled by what had to be every elf in the entire camp.

“It’s… I haven’t been able to tell. And I cannot make out their songs. Even with practice my Elven is-”

“Oh, I’ve heard it. The word you’re searching for is delightful.”

Cassandra scoffed. “That is not the word I would choose.”

Dorian stepped easily down from a low, smooth rock formation onto another just below it, then leaned back to seat himself next to Cassandra, her practiced hands moving across the blade of a sword, sharpening the weapon, testing the edge.

Just beyond them in the elven pocket of the camp the people - former city and Dalish alike - stood at the base of a fallen, gnarled tree as Lavellan spoke. When the wind did manage to carry her words to his ears they were quiet, determined sounds in a lyrical Elven. Proud words. Confident. Everything a young elven warrior might care to hear on the eve of their certain death at the hands of indifferent folk tales come to life.

Dorian listened, leaning in, and from time to time could make out individual words or a short string, but like Cassandra his Elven was somewhat lacking. Not for lack of trying, but the language had a meandering syntax so foreign to him it had been slow going, and Elven language teachers had been in very short supply.

“I do not envy her,” said Cassandra after a time.

“I doubt a single person ever has.”

Cassandra stopped, her hand still against the blade, and she sighed. “I regret so many of my dealings with them. I wish that I had been more understanding.”

Dorian leaned back on his hands, the grit fine beneath his palms. “This is a regret I can wholeheartedly get behind, though I daresay you were likely kinder than most.”

“A cold comfort.”

“Indeed. I was never especially cruel to the servants back home, but I was shockingly indifferent. Which I suppose is its own breed of cruelty. We don’t deserve what Solas has planned, but I’ll be damned if the idea wouldn’t be deeply satisfying if I were an elf.”

“I would not shout that too loudly, but I can hardly disagree. It is a shame it took this for us tor realize.”

Dorian drew a deep breath. “It is.”

They fell into a companionable silence, the haunting notes of a Dalish requiem on the breeze. As he listened he couldn’t help but recall his youthful obliviousness for the elves that had lived so near to him growing up. They were everywhere, running errands, tending to fine horses, burnishing away spots on the fancy silverware, and yet nowhere at all.

Even when he’d grown an awareness that these were indeed people with agency and desires he’d couched his conversations to them in his own guilt, always bringing the matter back to him, vexed and even a shade defensive when this had been delicately (always delicately) pointed out to him.

He hadn’t truly listened until Solas, who had no qualms about laying the matter out for him, and by then it was already too late.

The song carried on, the voices of the elves soft and low.

“I…” Dorian paused, the voices and their heartbreak suddenly too raw for his ears. “I don’t believe it’s my place to hear this,” he said, brow knit. “Cassandra, this is where I leave you to your giant knives, I think.”

“Get some sleep if you can, Dorian,” she said, not unkindly. “If you speak to The Iron Bull on your magic crystal you should tell him hello for me.”

“That’s it? Hello? You are going to fight three whole Elven gods tomorrow, you know.”

She considered this a moment. “Hello, and I miss him.”

Dorian smiled. “Goodnight Cassandra.”

“You as well. We will see one another soon.”

He set a hand on her shoulder as he rose, his own modest tent just down the hill, his own simple bed waiting.

***

The Dread Wolf had shifted to his bestial form as a matter of practicality. As a great, black wolf he faded easily into the darkness as the armies made their way across a desert that baked even at night.

And while elven eyes were far better at seeing color, at midnight there was little use for them - the pointed, swiveling ears and the soft, cold nose of the wolf were far better for picking up the sounds and smells of the world. On the wind he could smell the dust, the dry scent of what little vegetation there was and beneath it all, the acrid hints of tar from the nearby canyons.

It was a shame. The Approach had been lush and beautiful once. Yet another unintended victim in the fallout of the Veil.

When the two parties had settled for a rest and a small meal, Solas took to the edge of the camp and lowered himself onto the sand, two thick paws held rigidly in front, the night breeze rustling the fur along his shoulders.

It was no surprise when Ghilan’nain approached, her sentinels waiting in the distance, their expressions a catalog of the different breeds of contempt.

“Tell me,” she said, stepping over a stone to stand beside him. Solas turned his head just enough to peer down at her. “What did you feel when she died? What did you do?” 

With Ghilan’nain, the ‘she’ could only ever refer to Andruil. The question was a trap in almost every regard, but he inhaled and answered truthfully.

“Nothing.”

Ghilan’nain regarded him for a time, her features strangely neutral. “Then if you are the first to die tomorrow, I’ll do ‘nothing’ as well.”

“That is... more charitable than I had anticipated.”

“It is,” she agreed.

Some time ago (which was perhaps putting it mildly) he and Andruil had disagreed on some mundane verdict of Mythal’s. He doubted if he could even remember what. Over time, the tension between them had blossomed into a mutual dislike, and when, on one of his journeys, he’d surprised her on one of her hunting trips she’d been all too happy to loose an arrow and question later.

The incident had left a scar across his forehead that stubbornly refused to heal, and the tale itself seemingly managed to survive over the years in the form of rumour and gossip. It eventually even spawned a folksy Dalish interpretation (and like so many Dalish retellings, had taken on a strong undercurrent of lust).

Ghilan’nain lifted two fingers, and with the smallest of gestures she opened the wound once more, the skin unknitting in an instant. Blood began to seep into the fur above his eye, warm and wet, then searched out a path along the length of his nose.

He bowed his head, and it pattered onto the sand between the two paws, uncertainly at first, and then in a steady rhythm. Solas blinked, and what little he could see of the moonlit world was awash in red from one eye

Ghilan’nain lifted her chin and turned back to join her sentinels.


	22. Friend of the Dead

Lavellan had been in battles before, of course - both large, organized military pushes and desperate sudden skirmishes that left her panting and shaking, hands bloody - but there was something deeply surreal about seeing three of the most oft-invoked creators squaring off in the valley before her.

The Friend of the Dead - he was to the east, his people perched and waiting on the raised stony outcroppings, a vast canyon immediately at their backs. It was a curious, confident choice, for what general set themselves up with nowhere to flee? One, she supposed, who had no intention of fleeing, and for whom an imposing entrance was far more important.

She’d prayed to him countless times in her younger days, and there was a time when the thought of The Guide looking after her clan on their next great journey was a comfort.

Those prayers hadn’t been a total waste of time. They had, after all, helped her sleep at night, but she knew that when she slipped from this world into the deepest corners of the Fade (perhaps a fate for that very evening) that there would be no prayers offered to the owl, and no comfort to be gained by his presence.

The Mother of the Halla was southwest of him, her stern sentinels and a menagerie of pitiful creatures just behind. She’d changed outfits - gone was the gauze, and in its place an elaborate silver plate armour that stood out against the copper red of the rocks. Her expression showed no affection for her fellow false gods, only a grim determination and a loathing of all before her.

The sweetest of the creators! The picture of feminine virtue and gentle kindness, young Ghilan’nain, beloved by all!

She could almost hear Solas’ dubious, dry laugh at the woman’s not-so-hard-earned reputation, and Lavellan’s fingers closed tightly around the foci in her grasp.

Finally, always last, apart from all and never to be trusted, the Dread Wolf. Bringer of Nightmares and Lord of Tricksters. (At least her people had managed to get a part of the thing right.)

His people lay to the north, keeping a distance, visible from her vantage point in disciplined lines and neat blocks. Abelas and his sentinels stood at the vanguard, the spirits just behind, and making up the rear, the fierce, proud, purposeful elves from her own time who’d trickled in from alienages and servant’s quarters and aravels to stand with the Dread Wolf. They expected to die, but to die bringing about a new, enlightened age of the elves after generations of mistreatment and abuse? There were worse ways to end.

On her stomach, peering across the expanse at those amassed, Lavellan watched the wolf’s people with an aching heart and the strange, self-aware envy that always gripped her at their presence. Even from the cliffs above she could make out the former Dalish and city elves, and while none wore vallaslin and all had been fitted in new armour, shedding their clans and countries, they were recognizable by their slight, smaller builds.

Behind her, Lavellan’s own army lay flat upon their stomachs, dressed in greys and reds and fabrics dyed by the very minerals in the stones themselves. Loose wraps wound about their shoulders and covered their mouths to protect them from the blowing sand, and while the camouflage was not absolute, a cursory look across the area would likely save them from much attention.

Along their front lines, Dorian lay with the hand-picked battle mages who could cast the strongest barriers, and at their feet, the finest of Dalish archers, their quivers stuffed full. In a battle of magic close quarters combat would be a rare and desperate thing, and so those with sword and staff had been relegated to the back, their weapons at the ready should they be needed.

Cullen squinted across the low plateau, his mouth a thin line, his fair face already burned a tender looking red.

Overhead, two great birds wheeled.

Initially Lavellan took them for vultures, looming, casting their grim shadows across the soon to be battlefield (as was their right), but upon closer inspection it dawned on her that they were ravens. Massive ones. It was hardly the place for ravens - the black birds much preferred the damp, misty firs of the coast forests. The wastes were typically the domain of the ghoulish, craggy scavengers, who, strangely, were nowhere in sight.

“Fear and Deceit,” she whispered, her breath disturbing the sand by her lips.

"What?” Cullen barely turned his head.

“The ravens. They don’t belong here.”

He looked skyward, watching the too-large creatures as they beat their wings lazily in the warm, rising air drafts, tails fanning out behind them. After a moment he dropped his head, eyes searching her own. “What do they mean?”

She licked her dry lips. “There are four creators here, not three.”

***

Falon’Din was hardly interested in a pre-battle parley.

What could he possibly have to say to Fen’Harel save ‘die slowly, in agony, alone and forgotten. Twist in the nightmare of the Fade until it burns into nothing.’

No, he had no plans to meet either him or Ghilan’nain (beautiful, withholding young Ghilan’nain) for any discussion of terms. Indeed, as he watched the two armies approach, his own people kneeling, standing, lying along the raised rocks behind him, he’d already rejected the idea outright in favour of something with more violence.

Sylaise’s orb was indeed a powerful relic, but he had little use for her toothless magic. He was sure, given enough concentration, he could channel with it, focusing his own magic into something, but what that was and how useful it would be was another matter entirely. They’d never gotten along in life, he saw no reason why their magic should be any different.

But there was an alternative. (And it had the potential to be terribly gratifying.)

Instead of keeping the thing all to himself, this relic of immeasurable power, Falon’Din had sent a lone runner, Sylaise’ orb hidden in the loose folds of the girl’s garb. He’d made sure to pick one of the modern, masked ones, a little tribal creature, her vallaslin long faded across her cheeks. Fen’Harel (literally and figuratively) painted himself a saviour of sorts, prone to taking in the chaff, and as she approached the wolf’s banner she was ostensibly just a simple runner, just a messenger sent across the sands.

Falon’Din put his hands on his hips and shut one eye against the glare of the sinking sun.

He watched as one of Fen’Harel’s liaisons stepped forward to meet with her, to bring her forward to the wolf (Falon’Din held his breath) and it was then that the girl (with her meagre magical skills) reached into her robes and attempted to unlock Sylaise’s orb.

The pent up relic did precisely as Falon’Din had hoped. He laughed and clapped his hands together once in delight as across the plateau the girl, the rocks, the vanguard of the Dread Wolf’s army were swallowed up in a blast of light and heat and magic from an orb that was too wound up to do anything but explode.

Sure, it was a complete and indulgent waste of a foci, but as the pebbles around him clattered against the stone and a wave of white hot heat and blown sand rolled across his army, it was the most satisfaction he’d had in a thousand years.

***

Ghilan’nain was spitting with rage, her pretty mouth split, lined with a barely-healed red, cursing him with the foulest language as she approached from across the wastes.

“A thank you would suffice.” Falon’Din spread his arms in welcome.

“You haven’t killed him, you idiot, you’ve just kicked the hornet’s nest!” Ghilan’nain batted the outstretched arm away, but Falon’Din was all teeth, all lopsided in his broad grin.

“Why are you so sure?”

“You’re welcome to go appreciate your handiwork and I’ll see what comes of you. Have you forgotten about Mythal?”

He had. He drummed his fingers against his lips a moment. No matter. “...Why have you joined with him? I’m right here.”

“Because I’ve spent enough time around you for a thousand lifetimes, and wish you and your pitiful ghoul of a brother just as dead as him.”

“Fair enough. Either way, even if he’s not dead, he will be shortly. Watch this. Statues will come of this. They’ll write songs.”

And Falon’Din put out a foot and dropped forward from his perch to the ground just below, shot Ghilan’nain a pleased look (she crossed her arms) and strode forward across the sand, motioning absently for his sentinels to remain where they were.

***

Solas awoke with the sudden sensation of drowning, but when he opened his eyes and choked, sputtered, fought for a breath, it was only blood sitting in the back of his throat. Truly the only way to drown in a place like the Western Approach.

He rolled onto his side, spitting out the red and struggling to breathe against the soft, welcoming warmth of the sand.

Of course Falon’Din would be so rash and so maddeningly conceited. The idea of destroying such a fantastically important object for a momentary gain was something only he would do. The man had been locked away for countless years and still came out the other side the same selfish creature he’d been upon entering. If it wasn’t so infuriating, it would be pitiable.

Around him, as he lay on his side, Solas could hear the grunts and groans of those injured sentinels caught at the edge of the blast. With luck, Ghilan’nain could heal them, but their suffering at his oversight caused his anger to flare as he ran he back of his hand beneath his bleeding nose.

The messenger girl, too, mere spatters on the sand by this point. There was some small mercy in her quick death, at least.

“Fen’Harel.”

Solas felt the sand around him shift, and Falon’Din knelt at his side, his cloak coming to a gentle rest behind him.

That same self-satisfied smile. Even a thousand years later it was too soon to see again.

“You hardly need a guide to cross the Fade, but I’d like to insist.”

Solas pushed himself into a sit, but as he did Falon’Din stood, and as he stood his shadow grew larger, grew wider, grew points and new shapes.

In a heartbeat Falon’Din was no longer anything resembling an elf, but an immense, ragged beast, who stretched his decaying wings and beat them once, twice, blowing grains of sand that pricked and stung those sentinels that were too injured to drag themselves away. 

But to call him an owl was to call Mythal a salamander. Where there should be sleek feathers there were only the tattered remains of old burial shrouds, braids of hair, dried leaves, strips of flayed skin and hanging moss. His eyes were a rust red, his beak a broken thing, chipped and discoloured. Falon’Din was no regal, handsome bird as the statues would have one believe, but a creature composed of decay and grief, and as he stepped closer on claws ill-suited to the sand, Solas could make out the scent of dry, papery rot.

Lavellan exhaled.


	23. Return of the Dread Wolf

One moment Lavellan watched as Falon’Din unfolded his grim wings, Solas beneath, the talons precariously close, and the next the world was awash in a green light so bright it forced her to shut her eyes. From somewhere behind she heard Dorian curse.

Then, the wolf.

Its front paws landed hard upon the sand, seemingly from nowhere, the back following a heartbeat later. Falon’Din screeched in fury.

This was not the Dread Wolf, the elven man with an insult for a title, nor was it the regal, imposing creature Lavellan had clung to for warmth on the march over, but a monster unlike anything she’d seen on either side of the Veil.

The fur was matted in places, the ears shredded, its too-many eyes open and weeping a congealing blood. Despite the thick fur the creature’s ribs were clearly visible, and as it coiled back, threatening to spring, its shoulders jutted out with an unsettling violence. Solas’ mural depictions of the Dread Wolf were elegant, if foreboding, all sleek lines and clean geometry. This animal, if it could even be called as much, was little more than a demon from the heart of the nightmare.

_I would not have you see what I become._

“Impossible,” breathed Cullen next to her, and when Lavellan glanced over her shoulder she saw her army shifting, recoiling in place, some with hands at their mouths. The Dalish archers near the front looked unmoored, ill.

As promised by his posture, the wolf leapt. Falon’Din threw himself into flight, but the Dread Wolf’s bloody jaws closed down upon the nearest wing. The many eyes of the wolf shut, and his head twisted and wrenched sideways as he fell back to the ground, dragging the owl to the sand with him.

Falon’Din let out a second furious screech that carried across the dunes, and from far behind her Lavellan could hear the halla in the distant Resistance camp bucking and screaming against their leads.

For her part, she could do little more than stare in mute horror at the scene before her.

The wolf and owl tore into one another with such brutality that it was nearly impossible to make out where one creature ended and the other began. The wolf’s muzzle, slick with blood, snapped forward and tore mouthfuls of flesh and feather, and when he’d found sturdy purchase at the base of a wing he crunched down through muscle and bone, the cracking audible even to those on the surrounding cliffs. With a wounded Falon’Din in his jaws, Fen’Harel dragged the owl across the rocks.

Falon’Din’s curved claws, meanwhile, raked and reached and ran themselves through the black fur, coming away with great clumps of fur, leaving a deep red trail of blood in the sand. Where the Dread Wolf lifted a paw he left bloodied prints the size of an aravel behind.

Lavellan moaned at the sight and the muscles of her back tensed.

“We can’t help him,” Cullen said above the din, squinting at her against the last of the day’s light.

“I know,” she said, bracing as the ground shuddered just beneath her. “If I have to choose between him and my people, it's no choice at all.”

She took a steadying breath, willed herself to focus through the guttural screams and rattling snarls, and gestured with a raised fist for her army to hold, even as the stones around them shook and sand from the beating of the wings began to rain down upon the mismatched army.

Across the plateau the two ancient creatures rolled, thrashed, and loosed entire rock faces as they struggled, sending them sliding to the sand.

We can’t help him.

***

"So the evening was a success, it would appear."

The voice was a surprise. Moments before Skyhold's main hall had been barren of all life save Lavellan herself. The diplomatic envoys, soldiers and servants were all off to their beds, the former most willingly after a long night of drinking and standing around, the latter dismissed by the Inquisitor herself. The hour was appallingly late, and dishes would wait for the morning.

Lavellan had seated herself on one of the sturdy wooden benches, arms folded on a tabletop cluttered with cups, bottles of Josephine’s specially ordered Antivan wine and one deftly-crafted enamel mask, a thick Orlesian mustache captured in swirling silver, the lacquered surface engraved with tiny ivory roses - presumably the man's family emblem.

"It was." She smiled at Solas as he stepped neatly over the bench to seat himself next to her. "Admittedly not without some hiccups, but overall diplomacy was meted out and no one but myself was insulted in the process."

"You were insulted?" His brows arched upward.

She uncrossed her arms and turned to face him. "For all of a moment. This man," and she reached across the table and pulled the mask forward with a fingertip. "Told me the Dalish were thieves and poachers and the Inquisition just another stolen hart. He didn't even have the decency to mutter under his breath." Lavellan lifted the mask with gentle fingers and tipped it in her hands to peer at the empty eyes. "The night wasn't without some justice though - the last I saw he'd drunk enough to fall up the stairs and likely give himself a black eye.”

"Ahh, the shouting man."

"He seemed nice. Who falls up?"

"Anyone can be brave behind the safety of a mask."

"I should try it some time," she said. Lavellan considered the no doubt prohibitively expensive object in her hands and turned it around. The interior was a glossy bone white, completely flawless. She raised the mask, held it just in front of her face and peered at Solas with a broad smile that went unseen behind the enamel, save for the crinkling at the corners of her eyes.

"Good evening, monsieur,” said Solas, unfazed.

"Hello, servant." She pitched her voice lower, Iron Bull-like, heavily accented in faux Orlesian.

"Have you seen Inquisitor Lavellan? I wish to speak with her."

"The rabbit with the crown? Not lately, but if you have a message I'll shout it belligerently in her direction later."

"Ah. Well, I suppose that will work. Please tell her she should be proud of the way the Inquisition handled itself tonight. And that she was captivating for every step of it."

Lavellan lifted the mask, the gesture mussing her hair as it was pushed back.

"That's kind of you to say, Solas."

"Perhaps, though it is also the truth."

He reached across the small space between them and helped himself to the mask. Like her, he turned it over in his hands, admiring the craftsmanship, and when he was satisfied, held it up to his own face. "What do you think?" A rare smile to his voice.

She laughed, bright and pleased, threatening to wake the ravens in the nearby rookery.

"Please, no. Put it away! I couldn't bear to see you with a mustache. It suits Blackwall perfectly, but you're too handsome to inflict that on me.”

Solas peered at her from behind the mask, saying not a thing, his eyes betraying nothing.

Like her guests, Lavellan too had downed her fair share of wine, always delicately, diplomatically sipping between conversations, but over an entire evening each sip had begun to add up and she felt pleasantly numb and rosy. "Stop! Oh, it's terrifying! I’ll ship you off to a circle myself!"

She laughed again and put a hand on his leg as she leaned forward to retrieve the offending mask (which was hastily set among the cups and immediately forgotten).

She remained where she was, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath, to make out each of the many, light little freckles along the tops of his cheeks. Lavellan smiled and tipped forward to brush her lips against the line of his jaw . "Come upstairs with me."

"I was hoping you might ask."

“Solas, you have a standing invitation, you don’t need to wait for me. You’re welcome to climb that deathtrap of a staircase whenever you feel like it.”

“You do make it sound tempting. And what if I felt like it every night?”

“Ambitious words, hahren. I hope you’re prepared to back them up.”

Solas moved to kiss her, his fingertips light along her neck, and the taste of his lips betrayed the fact that he too had been partaking of Josie's special Antivan vintage.

*****

“Ghilan’nain’s moving!” Cullen hollered.

Lavellan propped herself on her elbow and craned her neck to see over the ridge. She was moving, and with great haste towards Falon'Din's people, weapons at the ready.

With the owl's people distracted and momentarily leaderless it was undoubtedly the ideal time to strike, but Lavellan was still wary of the woman’s temporary loyalty to Fen’Harel. Ghilan'nain could’ve rushed the Dread Wolf's disoriented people after the explosion and cut them down while they were still regrouping, joined sides with Falon'Din, but perhaps a thousand years trapped behind a mirror with the twins had burnt out her patience with them. Or more likely it was cold practicality that guided her hand and kept her allegiance to Fen'Harel. Falon’Din was a lot of things, Lavellan had learned over the years, and chief among those was overconfident. Given the choice, she'd opt for the thoughtful leader of a (more or less) successful rebellion any day.

To the west, Fen’Harel’s front lines were wounded, dozens of them seemingly killed outright. The rest had retreated a short distance and reorganized, spirits joining the sentinels at the vanguard, watching the plateau where Ghilan’nain’s army had fallen upon Falon’Din’s and were cutting a bloody swathe through the heart.

The tableau before her, of beast ripping at beast and the roil of two armies was enough to turn her stomach. The scent of blood, carried on the wind, certainly didn't help.

"It is supposed to do that?" Cullen's voice drew her attention from the battlefield and back to where she lay, the orb tucked just under her arm.  She looked down just in time to see it pulse with a red glow, and when she placed her hand over it, it was warm, almost hot.

Lavellan spread her fingers over the surface and felt the foci hum with power and something else. Something like approval. Realization dawned a moment later - it was responding to the blood, and it was looking for release.


	24. He Howled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last of the heavily action-oriented chapters. The remaining chapters will be more focused more on the Solas/Lavellan dynamic, just in case you’re anything like me, who tends to prefer the latter.

Falon’Din had been preoccupied with the satisfying act of plucking out one of the Dread Wolf’s many eyes when he heard the cries and howls of his followers being slaughtered.

His head swiveled, and when he saw Ghilan’nain across the battlefield, her crown of broken halla horns moving among the masses, he launched himself away from Fen’Harel (narrowly avoiding the snap of jaws) and took flight on broken wings that could only just support the weight.

Five, six, seven beats later and he’d swept across the plateau and come to an unwieldy landing in the midst of the battle, knocking a sentinel clean off his horse in the process.

“Ghilan’nain!” He could not - and nor did he wish to - keep the irritation from his voice. “What possesses you! Fen’Harel’s people are just there!”

She rounded on him, staff raised.

“You have never shown me that you were capable of outmaneuvering him, and have only confirmed my suspicions today! You are still rash, still short-sighted and the kind of selfish that steps beyond the borders into stupidity! Your twin is craftier than you by half - do not act surprised when I refuse to align myself to you, of all people!”

The owl, trailing blood, ruffled his ruined wings and followed her as she moved through his Dalish foot soldiers, collapsing their veins with a spin of the staff. Falon’Din stepped over a fallen mage donning the robes of a First and clicked his beak in irritation.

“This is madness, it’s running backwards to go forwards, Ghilan'nain. Join with me, or I’ll be forced to settle this with you when I am done with him.”

“By all means, please do.”

Falon’Din paused, head canted as he considered his position. Everyone had a weakness, even the titans themselves were not infallible, and Ghilan’nain’s weak link had always been far too obvious.

He attempted to draw his broken wing against him, but it hung unnaturally by his side. Not so much that flight was impossible, as proven on the short glide over, but enough to make it more difficult than it needed to be. “He betrayed Andruil, and you would side with him now? Who’s the true traitor here?”

“Your attempts at manipulation are painfully opaque, Falon, and I have no obligation to side with you just because we were imprisoned together. You should stick with the threats you so love.”

Ghilan’nain flicked the end of her staff in the direction of one of her wounded sentinels, and the woman’s wounds knit together in the blink of an eye.

She then paused and turned to face him fully. “Finish your battle with the wolf. Then we’ll speak.”

He stood straighter, peering across the battlefield, and noted Fen’Harel as the great black form fell back to look to his people.

“I know your plan,” he said. “You assume he’ll kill me, but Fen’Harel will not be the author of my death. I am death itself, and he’s nothing more than a mur -”

“Elgarnan murdered her, don’t pretend otherwise. Fen’Harel betrayed us, but it was not Fen’Harel who fought with Andruil for centuries, and it was not Fen’Harel who cut her down.”

“Still, when Elgarnan was searching for her after the mirror shattered it was Fen’Harel’s spy who led him to her location.”

Ghilan’nain’s eyes narrowed at the new information.

Falon’Din snapped at a too-bold sentinel attempting to harass him with a staff and the man quickly retreated into the fray. “That is no lie.”

“How do you know?” Ghilan’nain pursed her lips.

“Because. The spy was originally an agent of mine, and I was vexed that Fen’Harel had infiltrated my people so early on. And this is no manipulation of mine - between the two of us, who is the better liar, myself or Fen’Harel?”

That much was true. Falon’Din was competent at a great many things, but they were all blunt, inelegant things, and lying was not among them. Likewise, self-deprecation was unlike him. Ghilan’nain set the end of her staff on the ground and stared into the owl’s round eyes.

Falon’Din decided to press the issue, stepping forward on bloodied talons still tangled with fur. “She called out for you, did the wolf mention that part?”

Ghilan’nain lifted her chin.

Falon’Din stared back. “For all we know, he destroyed Andruil’s orb out of spite, so you couldn’t have it.”

There was a long pause between them while the battle continued on to either side.

Ghilan’nain was decisive in her next decision.

“Fall back!”  And she raised her staff into the air to summon her people forth.

Likewise, Falon’Din gave a short, sharp call, and his people paused, their swords slowly withdrawn from throats, staves lowered, the magic within dissipating into the surrounding air.

Both armies settled into an uneasy silence, watching those around them warily.

“I’ll join you,” said Ghilan’nain. “But I won’t leave this desert until he’s dead, and if you are too, so much the better.”

***

Abelas was in no condition to lead.

His blood, warm at first, quickly cooling, had begun to seep through the seams of his armour and drip from the gaps and settle into the engraved leaf work, turning their stems red. His hearing had been damaged at the initial explosion, and the ringing in his left ear refused to fade. He put a hand against it and held it in place, pressing, as if the act might somehow relieve the pressure. (To no avail.)

Nearby, Fen’Harel was scarcely any better, but in this incarnation of the beast Abelas could never tell which injury was genuine and which was a part of the mantel Fen’Harel donned in battle.

The limp seemed real enough though, and the Dread Wolf’s face was a mask of blood and froth that only managed to add to the effect. Falon’Din’s talons had ripped a long series of lines along his ribs and when Fen’Harel turned, Abelas could make out the white of bone beneath layers of muscle.

The wolf left a trail of blood in his wake, and when he stood in place, it pattered gently onto the sand beneath.

Mythal would be displeased with this turn of events, of that he was sure.

“See to his wounds!” Abelas ordered, gesturing to the nearest group of healers, waving one towards Fen’Harel when she came to see after his own injuries. “There is no time for that.”

And the words were scarcely from his mouth before he realized the full truth of it, for at the far end of the plateau Ghilan’nain and Falon’Din’s people had ceased their fighting and begun moving towards them as one.

Fen’Harel had clearly seen it too, and though he seemed calm on the surface (no doubt he’d planned for some betrayal or another) Abelas was near enough to the Dread Wolf to see the fur stand straight along the back of his neck. One massive army on the march with two Evanuris at the helm was not a sight he had hoped to witness, and though he had seen the mortals with their own army on the low cliffs to the south, he knew nothing of their true intentions, and doubted they would act as little more than a distraction. Certainly they were no true help.

Abelas glanced towards the shallow cliffs and saw Fen’Harel do the same, though he knew it to be for a different reason entirely.

***

Lavellan had watched the initial overtures of the battle with a kind of forced calm, clutching the foci close.

It was easy enough to parse the horror of two enormous mage kings tearing at one another’s throats against the backdrop of a spartan desert, but all that changed the moment the opposing armies - Fen’Harel on one side, Ghilan’nain and Falon’Din seemingly together on the other - met at the centre of the plateau. Whatever sense she’d been able to make of the battle from her position was lost in the chaos that came next.

The two sides surged forwards with an eerie silence, and at the moment of impact she could hear the sound of plate hitting mail, of distant ice splintering, of lightning crackling through the air.

Minutes that had previously dragged on became staccato flashes as the two groups, one vastly larger than the other, spread into one swirling mass of bodies, dotted here and there with plumes of orange flame.

Despite the battles she’d participated in, even lead, Lavellan was not a seasoned commander like Cullen. Still, it didn’t take someone of his caliber to see that Solas was dramatically outnumbered. The false gods and their followers pushed and pushed, relentless and full of fury, and the Dread Wolf’s people were forced to give, slowly at first, driven back as a group, their attacks increasingly wild and desperate as the last of the sun disappeared behind the horizon.

Falon’Din swept his wings forward, and those before him turned to dust, adding new grains to the desert. Ghilan’nain twisted her staff, and a group of mages dissolved into river fish, flapping and twisting on the ground until they were crushed underfoot.

As the battle raged on, she knew it was turning, and not in the direction Lavellan had hoped. (And not in the direction she had prayed for, even knowing that praying was beyond useless.)

“They’re going to break,” she said, her body stiff after so long lying in wait.

Cullen agreed, his tone somber. “It would seems so. If Solas’ people scatter,” (Lavellan tensed) “...we should be focusing on Ghilan’nain and Falon’Din’s strategies.”

He glanced her way. “But they may hold together yet.”

Then, as if cued for that very moment, Lavellan watched a young Dalish man - bearing no vallaslin, which was telling - slip from the crush of bodies and start for the surrounding hills, even abandoning his staff in the sand in his haste to flee the battle.

Lavellan released a held breath.

Fen’Harel, in the process of goring a gryphon (another of Ghilan’nain’s prize beasts) must’ve seen the defector and known it for what it was - the beginning of the end - and anticipated the inevitable scattering that was sure to follow. Lavellan would later mull over the intention of his next move as either one of desperation, strategic kindness, or the Evanuris equivalent of telling everyone on the battlefield to fuck right off.

The Dread Wolf turned from his prey and lifted his muzzle to the sky, howling a single, haunting note that carried across the stones. Not the familiar, mournful howl of the wolves of Thedas, but one learned in the blackest corners of the Fade.

And the effect was instantaneous.

All the creatures on the immediate plateau, elf or animal, were gripped with a bone deep sense of terror. It was the touch of a despair demon, amplified a thousand times, the kind of terror where one considered death a more reasonable alternative than living through another second.

Even from her place at the edge of the battlefield Lavellan was seized with cold, and she set her forehead to the cooling sand in an effort to hold back a cry that threatened to tumble forth, the darkest of all her fears pressing against her like spirits against the Veil.

On the battlefield below, staves were dropped, stomachs turned, and those in the area that didn’t drop into unconsciousness then and there simply turned and ran. It didn’t matter which direction as long as that direction was _away_ , and in the case of many of Falon’Din’s people, the main body of which had positioned themselves precariously close to the canyon, away meant death by precipitous drop.

Away, for many of Ghilan’nain’s people, also meant straight towards Lavellan's Resistance as it lay in the wings, waiting, themselves trying to regain their wits.

It was a small mercy, being just out of range to feel the full effect of the spell, and one that was not granted to the Dread Wolf’s own people, for they too dropped what they were holding and fled towards the open desert. Even the spirits among them seemed to wither and retreat, so powerful was the spell.

Cullen cursed, his hands shaking at the edges of Lavellan’s field of view.

With Ghilan’nain’s terrified followers headed their way there was precious little time to recover, however. Lavellan shifted her weight to look over her shoulder, and lifted an unsteady hand, palm out - a gesture for those at her back to ready themselves for a fight.

The low cliff they’d positioned themselves on was useful for staying just out of sight, but a short scramble up the modest incline and any desperate soldier could climb it, and by the looks of it, several hundred desperate soldiers were bearing down on them, ready to do just that.

“Be ready!” She shouted, and despite Solas’ spell, she found that her voice didn’t tremble.

The fleeing elves - sentinels bearing vallaslin, Dalish, city elves from what looked to be every corner of Thedas - they all broke upon the low cliff like a wave and began clambering to the top. It was unfortunate, she thought, that her army would be forced to kill or capture so many of their own people (and especially the city elves, who’d suffered so much), but sympathy was something she could little afford.

Lavellan stood, and so too did the army at her back, rising to their full height, staves and swords and shields at the ready. Beside her, Cullen lifted his sword.

“Barriers!” He commanded, and a wall of energy that hadn’t been there a moment before reflected the new moonlight.

She held the orb aloft, and it was as if it had been waiting along with her, only too eager act. It (she) seemed to inhale, drawing magic from the air so redolent with blood, building up its energy just beneath its stony surface, and when she willed it to release, directing her efforts at the first wave of would be attackers, they seized, their legs faltered, and they dropped to the sand, hearts stopped within their chests.

Lavellan reeled at the sensation, and it was only at the last second that she caught herself from stumbling backward. The orb's magic, so powerful before, seemed even stronger here, and channeling it was like trying to control a rushing river intent on carrying her along with the current.

Still gripped by their own terrors, more came, fast on the heels of the first. Again she drew from the orb, and again, a wave of soldiers fell, their bodies quitting at Lavellan's insistence.  

She did her best to make their deaths quick and painless, but they were deaths nonetheless, and as she fought to direct the surging power from within the orb, she knew every act of killing only served to strengthen the orb, the relic of a powerful blood mage. 

She fought for breath, panting, and yet more came. 

Again she lifted Ghilan'nain's orb, again it glowed red.

Beside her, Cullen readied himself for a fight. "Let us handle some of them!"

By the time her exhaustion had caught up with her Lavellan had successfully managed to cut down dozens of Ghilan'nain's own people - something she doubted very much was part of the god's initial plans. The orb hummed with power, and it occurred to her then, as the lone survivor of an explosion caused by a mishandled orb, that keeping the relic with her, in the midst of her people, suddenly seemed very ill-advised.

On the other hand, tossing the orb into the nearest canyon seemed equally ill-considered, for whatever Ghilan’nain had initially been planning, the orb was indeed a very powerful object, and remained so, even out of her possession.

“Cullen!"

"What!"

"You have sole command!”

“Why, wh- What are you doing!”

“I can’t keep the orb here, it’s too dangerous!”

Had it been any other commander she might’ve met with resistance to the idea, but Cullen had made his stance on magical elven objects clearly known, and instead he agreed without hesitation. “Understood! We’ll watch for you, and rendezvous at the camp should things go well!”

Which was a terribly optimistic thing of the man to say in the midst of battlefield now littered with corpses (and the soon to be).

“Fight well, Commander! I know you will!”

“And you, Inquisitor!”

"And me!" Came Dorian's distant call.

Lavellan took advantage of the madness and made her way to the fringes of her army, ducking nimbly just as the main body of Ghilan'nain's fleeing people reached the top of the cliff. With Cullen at the helm and her army in capable hands, she slipped between a pair of jagged boulders and worked her way - orb in hand - to the plateau below.

***

“Ghilan’nain!” The Dread Wolf's' anger was obvious.

On their own, Ghilan’nain and Falon’Din were callous and dangerous, and a Thedas with either of them on its proverbial throne would create a world rife with suffering. Together, they were nearly unstoppable, and neither elf nor spirit would be spared their cruelty. Leaving either alive was not an option.

With every living soldier and mage scattered, the last of the Evanuris stood alone on a battlefield pitted by magic and saturated in blood. The Dread Wolf took a step towards Falon’Din and Ghilan’nain, and as his paw met stone it became a foot once more. The rest followed, fur fusing into armour, the wounds still very much present, but arranged differently across his body. Shifting forms wasn’t a pleasant spell on the best of days, and this time the pull of his body was agony. Solas limped forward, masking what pain he could.

Ghilan’nain was first to step forward to meet him, her eyes flinty, armour bloodied, crown lost in the fray.

“Solas! Your alliance is forfeit!”

“So I see!" He said, the bridge of his nose wrinkling in distate. "Are you certain you wish to side with Falon’Din?”

“I am,” she spat. Solas pushed his shoulders back and raised his hand to cast even as she hissed.  “Falon’Din is a poor substitute, but I'll take his company ov-”

And before she could utter another word Solas finished his spell and Ghilan’nain was engulfed in a pillar of violet flame so intense that the waves of blistering heat were visible by starlight. Her staff clattered to the ground.

Night had fallen in earnest across the Approach, but for a brief moment, the surrounding plateau was as bright as day, the light casting flickering shadows along the rock.

Falon’Din, just next to her, started in alarm and pushed into the air, flying as fast as he could into the evening sky, upwards towards the first stars of the night.

From within the flame, Ghilan’nain had enough presence of mind to cast her final spell. She curled fingers licked with flame, and for once, used her own blood to cast the last of her magic, crushing Fen’Harel’s lungs even as she died.


	25. Dirthamen's Answer

There was certainly something within Lavellan that recognized the crackling, smoking embers, the ash drifting into the night sky, and the sudden lack of the foreboding owl’s presence. A part of her was aware of the distant roar of battle at her back, and a vague concern for Solas’ people, even then fleeing into the wastes, but it was all background noise, like the din at a market or wind through the leaves.

Her attention was fixed firmly on the silhouette on the ground, fallen forward on his hands, struggling to breath through what remained of sabotaged lungs.

“Solas!”

The sprint across the plateau was silent - bare feet on maddeningly slow sand - and when she did reach him, Lavellan dropped to her knees, set the orb to the side and placed a hand between his shoulders, along the new curves and pits of his dented armour, sticky to the touch.

It was as unpleasant a sight as she could ever recall seeing. Blood dripped freely from every seam, as if the metal were holding him together (and in some places, she suspected, it was). His fingers gripped fistfuls of rock and sand, and what breaths he managed to take were rattling, shallow, incomplete things.

“Hold on, I can fix this,” she said in a voice that trembled along the edges, even as she did her best to project calm control, to slip into (and stay in) the role of Inquisitor Lavellan, and not the woman who used to steal his blankets at night.

Lit by the violet glow of Ghilan’nain’s nearby coals she reached for the orb (which was well and truly hers now) and clutched it close to her chest.

“Vhenan...”

But then she paused. Something within compelled her to stop before she could cast so much as a spark.

Solas rasped something, his voice steeped in pain, but it was too quiet to hear, too pressed against the sand, perhaps too ancient.

Lavellan licked her lips. The smell of burnt hair hung heavy in the air.

‘ _Heal the Dread Wolf, doom your people_ ’, a voice within her cautioned.

‘ _You’ll burn just the same as her_.’

‘ _Leaving him to this death would be a kindness to yourself, your hands would be clean_.’

And, ‘ _Why are we here if not to slay a wolf?_ ’

Pat. Pat. Pat. Blood fell to the sand beneath him and was immediately swallowed by the thirsty Approach. She leaned back, away from the Dread Wolf as he struggled to breathe the dry night air.

‘ _He would do the same, without so much as pause, never doubt this_.’

Never doubt this.

But she did. Even as she climbed slowly to her feet she did, and even as she was gripped with the suffocating tightness of grief she did, and it burrowed its way into her resolve.

‘ _He will find peace in the Fade_ ’, the voice soothed, changing tactics.

‘ _You’ve felt it before - he wants to be stopped_.’

His breath came more sporadically, quieter, and his hunched form seemed to fall slowly forward, his forehead pressed to the ground.

A short distance away, Lavellan paced, the last notes of his suffering clawing at her consciousness, the orb warm and ready within her hand, and a different voice began to speak, quietly at first, but with increasing confidence and more insistence, until the first was only a background noise, like the din at a market or wind through the leaves.

‘ _He did you the kindness of removing the mark when he might’ve left you to suffer_.’

‘ _He would never permit someone to linger this way_.’

‘ _He has to die, but he need not do so in pain_.’

‘ _You’ve treated hares for the stew pot with more dignity_.’

‘ _He always reached for your hand first_.’

Lavellan ran the back of her wrist across her face, wiping away sweat and dust, scrubbing away the first frustrated tears.

‘ _Ghilan’nain meant to kill him in agony - heal him enough to ease the pain, then make it clean, quick_.’

If Solas needed to die to save her world (and he did, he did), it could be in kindness, the voice was right. She could still defeat the wolf, but it could be quiet, with compassion. A gesture of love. She could stop his heart just as surely as she had the sentinels scant minutes before, and there would be a horrible, almost rueful poetry to it, but it would be fast. 

She looked up, just over her shoulder, then turned and closed the distance between them. Lavellan fell to her knees at his side. If her decision was rushed, it was because she dared not give herself another minute to dwell on it.

‘ _Act quickly_.’

“Find me in the Fade,” she said, and set her hand along the lines of his face (so cool, almost cold), then took it away before she could reconsider. She palmed the orb. There would be no reunions in the Fade, it was a lie or a fruitless wish - the effect of the orb’s blood magic would see that she could never again walk the meandering paths of the Fade - but it a wonderful lie in the face of such oppressive solitude. In a way, it was a kindness. Better to dream of darkness and nothing than to dream fully and never again feel his presence, or to meet only shades and hollow memories of the man. 

Lavellan drew a slow breath and closed her eyes, letting her fingers move across the surface of the relic.

And it was so easy. It had to be, his blood was everywhere.

The orb surged at her touch, as if recognizing the urgency of the situation, and Lavellan’s world was alight with a wave of red so strong that she could only just contain it. The orb wanted to release itself, to show its true power, and these minor healing spells did little to alleviate that.

She could feel it working through her as it knit him together, starting deep inside, sealing tears that would’ve long ago killed any of her kind. Burns smoothed over, the blue left his lips, the blood dripped more slowly, then, after a moment, not at all.

There was silence for a time.

Then Solas gasped, taking in a mouthful of sand. He set to coughing, spitting old blood and sand, his fingers twitching and reaching for something to hold on to, but finding only dust. He still struggled for air, but through a body on the mend, not one on the brink of death.

The easy part was over. Next came the truly difficult, and the part she knew she would never forgive herself for.

Lavellan lay the orb just next to him and leaned forward, wrapping her arms around him from behind, pressing her cheek to his back. ‘Sometimes terrible choices are all that remain,’ she said, recalling his own words.

Were it any other time she would’ve been flooded with relief by his recovery. She might’ve lingered where she was, fetched him cool water or spoke in soothing notes, but instead she was weighed down by what must come next.

Lavellan felt as though she should say something more, maybe explain herself, but what was there to say that would provide him any solace? With his death so too died his dream of reclaiming the world for their people. She couldn’t trust herself to voice anything of true comfort to him.

Solas stirred and began to push himself up, and her hand slowly withdrew. With a heaviness of heart that settled into her, a numb acceptance, she took her cheek from his back and reached for the orb.

Solas’ breathing came more evenly, and he swallowed, running a hand over his face.

‘ _While he suspects nothing._ ’

Lavellan shut her eyes and drew a steadying breath.

When the sound of wings broke her concentration a moment later, she was flooded with gratitude, even as she peered skyward and saw the stars above masked by the shape of the returning owl.

In complete silence, a sharp contrast from his earlier attacks, Falon’Din began his descent, talons spread, each the length of a broadsword at the very least.

“Vhenan…” Solas, still recovering, had seemingly sensed the owl and tried to stand, but his movements were thick and clumsy, and the soft sand did him few favours as he attempted to brace himself in place.

Lavellan acted in an instant. She rose and darted just in front of Solas, who reached to brush her to the side, but she was much too quick, much too angry, and she pressed the orb to her chest as its red light flooded the plateau, illuminating the nearby boulders.

If the orb wanted to flow with the true power of Ghilan'nain, who was she to stop it.

And where once she’d stood in bare feet, clad in desert reds, a great beast rose above the dunes, the orb falling to the sand beneath her.

For the second time in as many weeks she’d felt her body pulled and pinched, the familiar, uncomfortable magic of shapeshifting molding her into something she was not, and when the spell had run its course, the ground lay far below.

Lavellan shook her head and felt the weight of twisted antlers above. She locked her legs and felt three of them beneath her, newly formed hooves sinking into the sand and rock. She’d been a wolf long enough to feel the difference between that shape, low and compact, and this new, regal halla form, and had all of a moment to acclimatize herself to the body before she remembered the owl’s approach and lowered her head, bracing herself for impact.

For Lavellan coming to terms with herself each moment was a small eternity, but from the outside it all happened in an instant, and for Falon’Din that instant was not nearly long enough to wheel away at the sudden appearance of a great white halla between him and the Dread Wolf, standing below. He shifted his balance and fanned what remained of his tail, attempting a last minute course correction, but the gesture was too little too late, and Lavellan felt a rush of wind and a frenetic, frantic rustling of wings as the owl dove into her antlers and impaled himself upon the twisting forms like a chevalier’s horse against a well-placed pike.  

The sudden burden of Falon’Din’s pierced body nearly toppled her, but rather than lift her head to fight against it, Lavellan allowed the weight to wrench her head towards the ground. Before he could extricate himself from the bloody affair, however, Lavellan dug her hooves into the sand and pushed ahead, bowed low, antlers pinning him against a dune and leaving him nowhere to flee.

Falon’Din writhed, his wings shedding shroud as they flapped, trying in vain to strike the halla whose antlers burrowed through his chest, parting his organs, piercing him from front to back.

When the wings wouldn’t reach, he stretched his legs upwards, kicking and clawing for Lavellan’s white furred face, catching it with the tips of talons and leaving red strips of broken flesh. He strained to reach her eyes, talons meeting only air, or catching on long, soft ears, dragging his claws until the thin flesh split, blood flowing over the white fur, staining it red and rust.

While Lavellan pressed forward, pushing deeper against the owl, Solas was not idle.

Nearly fully recovered, he strode forward towards the head of the floundering owl and drew a line of light in the air before him, neat and thin and fueled by a focused rage.

And just behind the line, Falon’Din’s neck parted and his head fell cleanly from his body. So consumed was he with fighting off the halla he hadn’t even noticed the Dread Wolf's approach.

In death, the shapeshifting spell released Falon'Din from the confines of his avian form, and Lavellan lifted her head and watched as the feathers retreated into skin and wings shrank back into arms. Curved talons became bare feet, but even as he became Falon’Din, the man, once more, no magic on Thedas could bring him back from his fate.

He lay dead, his head resting at an unnatural angle against his shoulder while the sand wicked away the blood. (And there was so much blood.) His orb, pulsing a pale blue, lay near his cooling hand.

Lavellan, freed from the tangle of the furious owl, stepped back on narrow hooves, careful to avoid stepping on Solas just below, and knelt on the sand. It was unwieldy, but the only way she knew to reach the ground.

Solas stepped back to watch.

Once there, she stretched out her neck and touched her nose gently to Ghilan’nain’s orb, which, seemingly satisfied, obeyed her wishes in an instant and sent her into her elven form in a rush of liquid magic.

She was grateful as the ground returned to its usual place, and when she lifted her hand (half expecting to see something furred or clawed or hooved) it was as it should be. She used it to wipe at the warm blood that trickled into her eyes.

Blinking away red, she watched as Solas stepped forward and sank down to join her, taking a knee. A hand went to her hair, smoothing it away from her face, gently untangling bloody strands. Through the moonlight and blood her vision was much impaired, but she could see enough to note his eyes were filled with such fondness, such sadness, that she could hold his gaze only a moment before lifting her chin and peering skyward.

Solas' hand - warm but calloused - pressed to her forehead, then gently over the shredded ears, a familiar green glow undoing much of Falon'Din's work, healing the cuts as she had so recently done to Solas. Still avoiding his gaze, she swallowed thickly. 

As they sat, two ravens lit upon nearby boulders, rustled their wings, and waited.

Lavellan reached for Solas' arm and held fast to the armour there, still dented. He turned, and when she followed his eyes she saw Dirthamen approach from the darkness, his simple dark robe trailing behind him in the bloody sand.

"I hadn't planned on him," she admitted, barely audible.

"Few can."

She took a moment to search Solas’ eyes, and even in the moonlight she could make out the deep furrow that creased his brow. He stood, albeit slowly, and Lavellan followed suit, stepping to his side. Solas glanced her way but did nothing more, and they both turned their attention to the former god of secrets and knowledge.

Lavellan had little experience with Dirthamen outside the tales of her youth and the grim impression finding his temple had left on her. Her recent attention - military and otherwise - had mostly centered upon his confrontational twin, but she now regretted pouring so much energy into the study of one over the other.

Fear or Deceit - who could say which one - cawed in impatience.

Dirthamen stepped to his brother’s body and peered down at it in silence.

Solas said nothing, but watched, and without a proper plan and her army on the other side of the plateau, she opted to do the same. The two brothers had been inseparable according to early stories, but only Solas would know how true that was.

Dirthamen knelt and moved to gather his brother’s orb, and Solas stepped forward as if to intervene.

Dirthamen looked up sharply as he stood. “Your Veil was folly, and removing it no different.”

Solas’ mouth was a thin line, but he remained where he was.

Momentarily forgotten by Lavellan in the fray, Dirthamen took another step and stooped to collect Ghilan’nain’s nearby fallen orb, and Lavellan gave a cry of objection and launched herself forward in an attempt to claim it. He simply raised a hand, and without so much as an admonishment she was thrown back against a nearby boulder, sending one of the ravens into the air. She felt the back of her head collide with flat, unforgiving stone, and the stars above her swayed and blurred at the edges. She cursed in Common.

Solas’ response was immediate. He arced his fingers through the air in a fluid motion, but whatever spell he'd cast was no match for Dirthamen, who now held Falon’Din and Ghilan'nain's foci in addition to his own. The spell, a blinding line of green light, collided with an invisible barrier and spiraled off into the sky. 

“For once, do nothing," Dirthamen said.

Lavellan’s hands shook as she fumbled for purchase, her fingertips searching along the smooth surface of the wind blasted rock as she attempted to rise.

Dirthamen held the two blue orbs together in one hand, balanced rather precariously, and Ghilan'nain's in his right. "You may have hers back shortly," he said, and Lavellan realized Dirthamen was speaking to her.

He turned and moved to a nearby boulder (which, in truth, was large enough to be considered a small hill) and pressed a hand to the flat rock face there.

"You cannot possibly inten-" Solas' voice. And then, for a span of time that was impossible to quantify, nothing. No light, or darkness, no sound or silence, just… nothing. The space before a life, or immediately after it.

The light came just after, and the noise too, a rushing wind that sounded like a tornado but stirred not a single grain of sand. And then it died down just as quickly as it'd come.

Where Dirthamen had once stood there were now only two ruined orbs, shattered into shards in the way Solas’ had been so many years before. They sat, nothing but harmless rock in a sea of harmless rock. Ghilan'nain's orb lay just beside them, whole and unmarred.

Lavellan heard Solas exhale in what could only be awe.

She raised her focus to the flat stone wall where Dirthamen’s hand had been, and on the red sandstone, a large eluvian now stood.

Or at least, a kind of eluvian. This was something raw and liquid, very much like the mirrors, but lacking the simple arched frame. She supposed she had never seen an actual eluvian made, but even so, this felt different.

Through the glowing, rippled surface she could make out a blue sky, green in the foreground - trees, perhaps - and in the distance the spires of what looked to be a massive city.

“Solas,” she said, climbing to her feet with the help of the very wall that’d nearly knocked her cold.

Solas, focused on the shifting image of the city, gave a half-hearted turn of the head at her words, but the eluvian drew his attention back immediately.

“Why?” He said.

He took a tentative step forward and lifted his hand to the watery surface, fingers held scant inches away.

Lavellan knew neither the answer, nor the meaning of his question.

He picked the shell of a ruined foci from the ground, and the last of its blue magic ebbed away into nothing. “The twin orbs, two halves of the same titan.” And raised his eyes to the mirror once more. “Twin worlds. I had never suspected...”

Lavellan peered just past him, towards the graceful spires. “Solas. Is that… That couldn't be Arlathan, could it?”

And it was as if her voicing the thing made it true in his mind.

“Yes,” he whispered to the fragment in his hand, which was then carefully placed next to its brother. “It is Arlathan.”

Lavellan knew the wondrous when she saw it- she’d walked the Fade and seen gods come to life, after all - but the throbbing in her head put a damper on what she knew to be a moment of future legend for her people.

What a shame, she thought, to feel like vomiting at the first sight of a momentous new era for the elves. 

“It is Arlathan. And all of Elvhenan.” And Solas stepped through the mirror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Late update this week due to work crunch, apologies. Truthfully, most of the intent behind this story was to have a venue to write a fraught, sexy soiree in Arlathan, and with that said I’m pumped to write the next couple of chapters.


	26. In Another World

“And what is this one, would you suppose?”

Lavellan looked from the Tevinter ambassador’s recently arrived plate to her own.

“This one’s just a regular meat pie, as near as I can tell.” She gave the flaky, decorative crust a gentle tap with the tip of her knife. “Nothing magic or especially elven about it.”

The man made a sound of understanding, then, by all appearances satisfied, he began forking the dish apart, the gravy oozing across the delicately patterned plate. After four previous courses she could only be impressed by the man’s resilience. 

She imagined it’d been some Arlathan organizer’s idea of a kind gesture, seating her beside the representatives of Thedas at the long grand table, but it felt more like a strange othering and a obligation, not unlike whiling away the time with little-seen cousins at a wedding one was only vaguely interested in attending.

Not that she was disinterested in attending Arlathan’s official welcome - it was sure to be a fete to put even Orlais to shame - but her feelings were complicated, flowing from genuine wonder and excitement to a sense of foreboding. At the political delicacy required at such an event, at the sight of a city she’d written off as myth, at the way the leaders of Thedas would compose themselves, and perhaps most keenly (all Solas matters aside) how the residents of Elvhenan would see the woman who’d helped kill Falon’Din, and who now held Ghilan’nain’s foci.

A foci that had been left at home under the care of Cassandra and her most trustworthy soldiers.  

Nevara, Antiva, the Anderfels, Par Vallon, Fereldan, The Free Marches, Orlais - even Tevinter had all been sent official invitations to the dinner and accompanying week long soiree (the ancient elves did nothing by halves, apparently), though it’d taken nearly a month to find a Tevene diplomat brave enough to agree to enter into the heart of the elven capital. A capital whose main seat of government resided in a palace floating casually above the city, perched upon rocks with little to no regard for the natural order of things.

Originally Lavellan had inquired after Dorian to accept the invitation, him being the obvious and very socially savvy choice, but he was laid up in bed with broken ribs and a host of other minor ailments after the battle. Lavellan had asked, he had laughed heartily, then winced, then quietly, politely declined due to his health.  

She pushed her fork into the pie’s crust and helped herself to a small taste (rabbit, perhaps), all the while scanning the grand hall for signs of Solas.

It had been some weeks since the battle in the Western Approach, and since that time Lavellan had laid eyes on the fabled city of Arlathan only the once.

As tempting as it had been, having followed Solas through Dirthamen’s mirror and standing on the precipice of Elvhenan, leaving Thedas behind at that moment was not only selfish, in the tumultuous political climate it would be dangerously irresponsible.  

She’d stayed that way, at Elvhenan’s doorstep for some minutes, watching as Solas started for the distant city walls, slow and deliberate, as if in a trance. His fingers brushed plants she’d never seen before, and when a bird called in the distance, it was no call she could place.

Besides the immediate visual differences, there was something that felt dramatically altered about the world through the mirror. Magic lay beneath the surface of everything, prickling against her skin, hanging in the air, ready to pluck and mold into whatever she might have need of. For a mage of Solas’ caliber, Thedas, so fearful of magic, Lyrium parceled out like rations, must’ve left him parched.

For a Dalish woman with a sense of wanderlust and an insatiable curiosity the need to see what he’d been willing to fight for pulled like a current, but ultimately it was Solas’ moment and Lavellan a trespasser in a new, ancient land. As he started forth in earnest she’d hung back, then eventually, without so much as a goodbye, retreated back to the mirror and stepped through, returning to her own people.

Hundreds of years (at the very least) he’d been waiting, hoping to see his city again, and the idea of inserting herself into something so personal felt off. There would be time to pepper him with questions and to pore over each rock and tree, but not then, not so soon on the heels of such violence and chaos. Like many nights in Skyhold, she’d opted to leave him alone to his thoughts.

Besides, in the immediate future she’d needed to look to her people, to see the living patched up, the dead tended to, political entities notified, which was a feat in and of itself. What could those missives possibly say? That they looked to be out of danger because a former elven god had magically split their world into two? ... _again_?

There was also a matter of what to do with the remains of the Evanuris. Did they belong to the Dalish? Likely not. To Solas and his people? Should they simply leave them to blow away in the sand? Perhaps a fitting end for Dirthamen, but Ghilan'nain and Falon'Din were creatures of grander tastes. Lavellan imagined neither would care for their future interments, whatever they might be.

The mirror to Elvhenan had solved so many of her problems, but the future was not without a thousand, smaller new ones.

In the weeks following Elvhenan’s renewal Arlathan had opened its doors to diplomacy with Thedas, and through it all there was no word from Solas.

Lavellan tried not to take this to heart. From what little she’d heard - through rumors and the odd report from Charter - the new Elvhenan was just as vast as Thedas, Arlathan more sprawling than Val Royeaux, but the population had been truly decimated. What few remained of the ancient, awoken elves had made their way through the mirror and were no doubt attempting to rebuild what had once been, albeit with vastly reduced numbers and a dearth of leadership now that the Evanuris were well and truly gone.

If the opening of Elvhenan had caused her a string of political headaches, Solas must be neck deep in the things. Which, in all honesty, he was probably reveling in.

Lavellan had sat down one afternoon and written him a letter - equal parts furious and distraught - laying into him in one paragraph (withholding! occasionally paternal! condescending!), lamenting her seemingly unshakeable love in the next (“I always knew you would be my death, but I’d assumed the cause would be something more violent or immediate, not this slow starvation”). Nine densely written pages later, she balled the papers in her hand and lobbed it neatly into the fireplace, then licked her fingertip and helped herself to a new sheet of parchment.

The next letter she sent along to Arlathan was measured and even, a welcome to Arthalan on behalf of the collected Dalish, a hope for peace, a proposal for Arlathan to send teachers and liaisons who might help the elves of Thedas come to terms with the new world.

Eventually, near the end of an optimistic and perfectly bland letter, there was an inquiry after Solas, whom she referred to as Fen’Harel in the interests of clarity, and in the interests of quietly admonishing the man should he be the one to read it.

_In another world._

Soon came the invitation to Arlathan’s celebration and with it a pressing question of a new and frivolous nature - what did one wear to a ball in Arlathan?

There were no books on the matter, and the few ancient elves to remain in Thedas for the time being were sentinels at the eluvian, and as she’d learned from prior experience it did little good asking a soldier for formal wear advice.

She wasn’t one of Solas’ people and had little idea what they valued in fashion, so dressing like them would only serve as an embarrassment. She wasn’t a noble, so donning human cuts and silks would go over equally well. Gowns suitable for a soiree in Orlais might be seen as a humiliating choice in Antiva, and so on the world over.

Lavellan was Dalish, and the highest style of formal wear they wore were festival dresses or wedding garb, which felt folksy and out of place even before she’d finished the thought. She wrestled with the problem for a full week before a letter had arrived and solved the problem in one stroke.

The letter was from an elven dressmaker in Val Royeaux, ostensibly for human nobles, offering her services for the former inquisitor. Talk of the ball was all over the city, and the least she could do, she said, was write.

“I left my clan when I was very young, but the blood of the Dalish still runs through me, and after years of crafting gowns for the finest houses in Orlais I would be honoured if you would allow me to sew you something suitable for Arlathan. I provided so little towards our people these last years - I couldn’t fight, I was too afraid to leave the city - but this I can do, and I believe I can do it well.”

If the dressmaker could elevate practical Dalish costume to something worthy of a ball in the Dread Wolf’s den, then by all means.

“Oh she’s quite good, my dear.” Vivienne seemed pleased by the choice, which was saying something. Leliana had attempted to offer advice on the newest cuts of footwear, but remembered at the last moment that elves rarely bothered with shoes, and looked momentarily put out.

After three separate fittings, amidst the buzzing and tutting of Josephine, the dress was finally completed.

It was a warm bronze, simple but elegant, the silky fabric sewn in such a way that it seemed to echo the lines of leather arm wraps, forming a very subtle v pattern the length of the gown. It was all very understated and all very Dalish while still looking as though it cost as much as an Orlesian summer palace.

“I love it,” she’d breathed. And after years of military garb and practical field clothes she’d shown it to a fully healed and now very restless Cullen and he’d coloured a quiet shade of pink, which Lavellan took to be a very good thing. Out of curiousity and a sort of anthropological endeavour she'd winked, and was pleased to see the colour on his cheeks deepen.

In Arlathan, the dress seemed to meet the approval of the curious dinner goers as well, for along the length of the table she often saw a diner leaning forward, craning their neck for a peek and sometimes smiling warmly, seemingly in her direction, often turning back to converse with those immediately around them.

When Lavellan finally spotted Solas it was well after dinner had finished (an appalling fourteen courses in total), when the guests had been ushered from one beautiful crystal hall into a second, even larger and more ornate space, the floor so polished it had taken on a mirror-like quality. Which was itself a small, wonderful scandal for anyone in robes or gowns. 

Dressed in finely cut but simple greens, accented here and there with cream, Solas looked very well indeed. He bore no lasting signs of the battle and smiled often, even laughing from time to time.

He was watching her from the corner of his eye even as he addressed two sylvans, and the sudden recognition on her part was enough to daze her. From where she was standing and over the sea of voices she couldn’t make out what he was saying to the tree spirits, but, as if to acknowledge her glance, he raised one eyebrow the slightest bit and fixed his gaze on her own.

Lavellan was flooded with a surge of irritation. How dare he say so little for so long, then give her that look, of all possible looks. Not a joyous hello or the broad, uncharacteristic smile she'd hoped for, just a crinkling at the corners of his eyes and an entirely too-confident ‘will see you in a moment’ of the brow. She lifted her wine to her lips, raised her own brows and turned away.

 _One day you’ll be snubbing the Dread Wolf in Arlathan while you drink thousand year old wine_ , a part of her piped up with no small amount of delight.

To complete the snub, Lavellan made her way down the length of the room, past the Fereldan ambassador as he attempted to answer a question about dogs to a woman who all but towered over him. Lavellan drifted to the side of the hall to take in the views from a long, elaborately carved marble balcony that she knew would look down from dizzying heights over the city far below.

Eventually she looked over her shoulder and saw Solas making his way in her direction, stymied here and there by well-wishers and doe-eyed youths looking to introduce themselves. But even as he made his way through the crowd he seemed in no real hurry, pausing now and then to confirm she was where she’d been.

_Hunt well._

And the words, recalled from a simpler time, stitched a handful of thoughts into one - Solas was hunting, and she was undoubtedly the prey.

His approach was delicate to be sure, feeling out where they stood, getting a sense of her edges, and she couldn’t blame him one bit. The last day they’d spoken face to face he was still intent on remaking Elvhenan from the ashes of Thedas. The last time she’d held him in her arms she’d been moments away from stilling his heart.

For both of them to be alive and whole thanks to Dirthamen, of all people, took some getting used to. The false god of secrets had taken the most urgent question - why? - to his grave, and whatever his reasons were, whomever he’d done it for, all of them, Solas included, must live with the unknowable from hereon out.

Solas strolled closer, hands folded behind his back, moving through the room and stopping to smile graciously or nod somberly at those who approached him.

Well. If the wolf wanted a hunt, who was she to deny him one. Lavellan set her wine glass on the thick stone railing and, when she was sure his attention was on the group of women he was speaking to, she slipped away from the balcony and rejoined the masses, vanishing into a crowd of increasingly merry revelers.


	27. Do You Want That

Between the main assembly rooms, the grand staircases and elegant balconies, the elaborate garden at the centre of it all and the countless nooks and crannies of the place Lavellan was spoiled for avenues of escape.

Each of the cavernous rooms, with their starry, vaulted ceilings and mirrored floors, were filled with people (and spirits, and sylvans, even a handful of small, seemingly polite dragons) and it was a simple enough matter to make her way through the crowd, stepping between packs of party goers dressed in their finest.

Simple enough at first.

What started as a very achievable goal -  to make her way across the room - became more and more ambitious a task as the smiles of recognition at dinner evolved into gentle fingers against her shoulder (“I beg your pardon, my lady” or “I hate to trouble you, Fen’Enaste”), or invitations for a glass of wine.

They thanked her profusely for services rendered, or introduced themselves, then introduced a friend or two for good measure. Many attempted light chatter on the subject of the Dalish, or else inquired after the odd customs of Thedas, tactfully avoiding the matter of the recent battle in the interests of keeping the tone celebratory. “Is it true that…” (And most of the time it was not true at all.)

Curious spirits trailed behind her for a time, watching her slowed attempts at escaping the wolf (who was Cole only knew where at the moment) and far more often than she’d been anticipating, she was met with a bow, or a subtle nod of the head from people she was sure she’d never met.

So Solas had told them, at least in part, about her role in the Approach.

There was also the odd scowl, the occasional up and down and once a hissed ‘murderer’, and when Lavellan turned to find the source of the voice it was just in time to see a woman bearing Ghilan’nain’s vallaslin turn back into the crowd.

But there was little to be done for that (Ghilan’nain had made her own cruel bed), and like an arrow against steel, the woman’s insult left no lasting mark. Indeed, as much as Lavellan tried to retain some of her initial sense of caution about the evening, it was hard to hold the wary, irritated feeling in her heart in light of such a joyous atmosphere.

When she’d tipped back her third glass of proffered wine (“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of the fruit you mention”) and gently shed her latest coterie of onlookers she took the opportunity - one she’d avoided out of politeness - to stand on her toes and peer above the crowd in an attempt to see Solas. He was undoubtedly just as set upon by guests, and if that was the case-

Then, by a nearby staircase, she met his eyes.

He held her gaze for as long as he might, then Lavellan watched him turn to the people amassed and quietly excuse himself before starting across the floor in her direction.

She wasn’t snared so easily.

Lavellan dropped back to her normal height and wove her way the right, attempting to don the mask of a woman who was urgently needed elsewhere, and she was momentarily successful at it, for although many people smiled and nodded, none reached out to stop her or press another too-delicious drink into her hand.

The night's escape had started with her vexed and incredulous, but her mood had bloomed into something far lighter as the evening wore on, and though tendrils of anger still wrapped about her heart they constricted a little less with every sip of wine or bite of offered chocolate.

On her way towards the central garden, she passed a young lady with rosy cheeks laughing and fawning over two sentinels, who’d dropped their stoic demeanor and positively lounged against a column, grinning and tipping back glasses filled nearly to the brim with a deep red wine. Lavellan gave them their space, but it was such a playful scene she couldn’t help but cover her mouth to hide the smile as she continued on. It was as good a night as any to eat too much, regret one’s wine choices and seduce two men at once.

Not for the first time she heard the name Fen’Enaste called in her direction, and made a note to return to the thought at a less pressing moment.

She’d nearly reached the descending stairs to the garden when she felt a hand placed against her lower back. She looked up, and into Solas’ eyes, lifting at the corners.

Solas smiling was a rare enough sight in the days of the Inquisition, but as she turned to face him fully it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen him smile a genuine smile, untouched by melancholy, in what felt like years.

“You would leave me to discuss the weather with the Tevinter ambassador?” He said, his voice quiet amidst the crowd. And still smiling, a subtle thing.

“Your people sat me next to him for a feast with three independent soup courses, so you’ll get no pity from me. You deserve every nap-worthy anecdote you have have coming to you tonight.” After a pause she returned the smile, slow and sly, and leaned up on her toes to better meet his gaze. “And I hope the night is filled with them.”

The next moment was something of a blur. His hand at her back slipped about her waist and pulled her gently but firmly forward, and her arms went around him without hesitation. She clutched at the rich fabric and thick pelt about his shoulders and inhaled the smell of wine, possibly paint, and something uniquely Solas, while his embrace was tight enough to hurt.

Lavellan inhaled an unsteady breath.

“Are you still Solas?” She said, eyes closed, fighting back the threat of tears.

“I am,” came his voice, muffled against her hair. “Now more than ever.”

Lavellan stayed as she was, arms wrapped about him as tightly as she could, and he seemed content to do the same. When the danger of sobbing against a flayed wolf skin had passed, she glanced fleetingly behind her, only to be met with a wake of intrigued faces. A quiet murmuring seemed to inevitably follow, and one woman lifted her wine glass a fraction of an inch, a conspiratory gesture that Lavellan wasn’t quite sure how to take.

Her arms still draped about his neck, she felt Solas shift.

“Come with me,” he whispered. And he pressed his palm against the curve of her lower back once more and began to guide her across the mirrored floor with a haste that’d been absent in him all night.

The way he moved through the assembled crowd spoke of an impatience and an eagerness to be elsewhere, and the crowd parted, falling silent as the two began to head in the direction of a staircase leading up and away from the celebration.

“Fen’Enaste?” Lavellan said, arching a single brow as they stepped together onto the bottom step.

“I can assure you, that was not of my doing,” he said, looking to her with something apologetic in his eyes. “The sentiment is romantically well-intentioned, but casts you in relation to me and pares away your own accomplishments.”

“Herald, Inquisitor and Favour.”

“And Heart,” he agreed.

“I prefer the latter, if it still holds water.”

He turned to watch her as they ascended. “It does. Let me show you.”

At the top of the stairs, beyond two landings, the sound of laughter finally died away into a pleasant background hum and Lavellan took a breath, pleased at the comparative quiet.

“I had hoped to show you this when it was complete, but there is...” He licked his lips, considering. “Something honest in the vulnerability of a work half-finished.”

He gestured, and the motion drew her eye upward toward a vast mosaic in new, glittering tiles, beginning where she stood at the entrance to the upper hall and traveling the length of the wall, a distance long enough that a party on the far end would need to shout to be heard.

As he’d said, the immense piece wasn’t quite complete - the geometric borders looked to be finished the entire way around, but the images in the centre made it only halfway down the corridor before trailing off into loose sketches and rough colour schemes.

“Is this one of yours?”

He shook his head. "I have attempted some mosaic work before, but I prefer the texture and immediacy of paint." 

Like the mosaics in the temple of Mythal or Fen’Harel’s sanctuary, those of the hallway had been carefully laid in a simplified hand. The forms were general, more of an impression of a man or raven or dragon, while buildings were mostly silhouetted, trees and mountains only slightly more involved.

“This is like the pieces at your sanctuary. The welcomes and warnings,” she moved her hand towards the nearest section of wall - what looked to be a dense forest framing a collected group of simple elf shapes. “Is it magic too?”

“Very much so. There is little in Elvenhan that is not.”

Her fingertips nearly brushed the surface, but after a moment’s consideration she took her hand back and turned to her host.

Up close, Solas looked at ease, even peaceful. The soft expression, with no crease of the brow or narrowing of the eye, was a strange sight for a man she’d always associated with quiet inner turmoil.

The hand that a moment ago reached for the mosaic now lifted and slid along his jaw, fingertips stopping only when they’d reached the spot just below his ear. Solas shut his eyes and leaned his head into her touch, then turned his head just enough to press a kiss to her palm. 

"Ir abelas..." He began.

"I know," said Lavellan.

Then his hand lifted hers (and there was a tiny speck of blue paint just beneath one nail) and raised it towards the cut tiles. She shot him a curious look - one that granted permission with a lift of the brow - and he squeezed her hand gently and pressed her palm to the surface of the mosaic.

Like those she’d encountered in the past this one flooded her with borrowed emotion, a spell that captured the feeling of the author.

Her hand, placed upon a group of faceless elves headed towards the centre of the mosaic, became a vessel for the emotions set into the piece, and Lavellan was overcome with a feeling of disbelief and almost panicked hope. It was the feeling of elves, city, Dalish and ancient, laying eyes on Arlathan and being pulled towards it, knowing what was there was home.

It was almost too much to bear. She pulled her hand away and looked to Solas, eyes wide.

“It’s like…” She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “It’s the feeling of coming back to camp after a long trip, only…” Lavellan pressed two fingers to the tiles, just lightly, almost grazing the surface. “So much older.”

The description felt clumsy and broad in comparison to the complex sensation brought about by the mosaic, but rather than dwell on sounding silly in front of one of the world’s oldest poets she moved forward, to the simple shapes of a sentinel opening the gate to Arlathan, and again pressed her hand to the tile.

Like before, the sensation of relief was paramount, but just beneath that a feeling of fierce pride and something beyond duty, a need to protect all those arriving. The feeling of shaking away idleness like a layer of dust, a sense of purpose, and anger, and even deeper, of deepest love and devotion.

“Abelas,” she said, running her fingertips over the seams between each tile. It was hard not to feel affection for the man.

“And others like him.”

Solas stood to the side and watched as Lavellan explored the mosaic, running her hand across the trees, the rivers, the dragons flying overhead. There were spirits -  all kinds - and with each figure came a pure new emotion, undiluted by other concerns. There was a compassion spirit, faith, honor, and wisdom among the crowds. There was a spirit of what was clearly justice, sword in hand, one of duty, and finally, as she placed her hand over the remaining spirit figure, Solas’ hand pressed over her own.

“Oh,” she said, just above the distant din of the party. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a love spirit.”

The comment was met with a soft, warm kiss to the curve of her neck. “I almost envy you. But you will.”

As inclined as she was to continue pulling that thread, a figure at the centre of the mosaic caught her eye. A golden wolf, posed rampant, mouth open as it snapped for an as of yet unfinished owl. Its many red eyes were cut from slivers of tile, and from its flanks it dripped red triangles, pooling beneath it in a round puddle of geometric blood.

“What happens when I put my hand on the wolf?”

Solas glanced up, towards the imposing creature on the far side of Arlathan’s city gates.

“You will feel what I felt.”

Lavellan stepped forward and inspected the creature, set with the utmost of care into the grout. “Solas. Do you want that?”

His smile faltered at the corners, but only just. “More than anything.”

She turned back to the mosaic and inhaled, willing herself to raise her hand. “So do I.” Lavellan pressed her palm to the cool surface of the golden wolf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been updating on Sunday, but the final update will be a bit late due to some traveling next weekend. After F&F is wrapped up I’m sure I’ll keep writing DA/Solas pieces here. :) Thank you so much to everyone who’s commented so far, this is the longest piece of fiction I’ve ever written and your encouragement has honestly meant so much.


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